Top 6 benefits of zero-trust security for businesses

What is zero-trust security?

One of the more high-profile examples of available frameworks is the zero-trust security model. This model differs from other security framework approaches from both a methodology and benefits perspective.

As its name implies, zero-trust security treats all users, devices and resources as untrustworthy -- regardless of who or what they are or where they connect to the corporate network from. This is in stark contrast to more traditional security frameworks, many of which create security control boundaries where those on the outside are trusted less than those on the inside. With zero trust, there are no boundaries and nothing is inherently trusted.

While clearly more restrictive, the benefit of the zero-trust model is that it creates a far more secure environment to protect against unauthorized access to sensitive data and digital assets. This shift is in response to the continuous increase in users, autonomous IoT devices and networked applications a corporate network must support.

Many organizations already dismantled the traditional secure network perimeter security philosophy as they began migrating apps, data and services to the cloud and edge compute locations. The surge of remote workers is yet another reason for the uptick in zero-trust adoption. It is easy to see why the change from boundary-based security to resource-based security was necessary. Simply put, the increased attack surface area caused by more distributed users, devices and networked services required this change.

What are the business benefits of a zero-trust model?

Because the zero-trust framework is a holistic approach, it has a wide range of security benefits. Let's look at the top six cybersecurity business benefits that can be found within a zero-trust model.

1. Accurate inventory of infrastructure

Zero trust requires administrators to have a handle on exactly what users, devices, data, applications and services are included in the corporate infrastructure and where those resources reside. An accurate infrastructure inventory not only helps with security-related matters, but it's also beneficial for long-term performance planning purposes.

2. Improved monitoring and alerting

Monitoring a zero-trust framework can be complex unless the right tools are in place. Resources, such as SIEM; security orchestration, automation and response; and network detection and response, use a combination of log and event analysis and AI to identify when security issues occur and then provide insights into how to remediate them. This gives security operations center administrators the ability to rapidly detect and respond to cybersecurity threats.

3. Improved end-user experience

When users think of IT security, the first thing that often comes to mind is the difficulty in keeping track of the various passwords they need to access the applications and data necessary to perform their job duties. One key element of zero trust is the ability to deploy single sign-on (SSO) tools that greatly simplify the number of passwords users must keep track of.

An SSO authentication framework helps organize what infrastructure resources users or devices should have access to. Thus, SSO lets users authenticate once to gain access to everything they need. This helps eliminate password mismanagement, enabling users to easily get to the resources they need while single- or multifactor authentication and access controls operate transparently in the background.

Additionally, placing zero-trust security tool services closer to local and remote workers helps improve overall application performance. Shifting these tools to edge compute points of presence helps lessen the overall network latency that these types of security services add.

4. Streamlined security policy creation

Traditional security models used a siloed approach to threat prevention. This meant that each security tool was individually configured and operated independently from one another. This often left parts of the infrastructure more vulnerable when security tools were misplaced on the network or were misconfigured. Zero trust helps in this regard because a universal policy can be created once and then implemented from end to end throughout the organization. Again, SSO is a great example of this as it manages authentication for all resources on the entire network. Not only does the deployment and management of security policy become far more streamlined from an administrator perspective, but the potential for security holes or gaps in some parts of the infrastructure becomes far less likely as well.

5. Flexibility when moving apps, data and services

As business goals change, so do the needs of the technology required to support them. As such, applications, data and IT services are often moved around within the corporate infrastructure. Prior to zero-trust architectures, moving applications and data from private data centers to a cloud environment, or vice versa, forced security administrators to manually recreate security policies at the new location. This not only became a time-consuming process, but mistakes were often made that led to security vulnerabilities. Zero trust helps in this regard because app and data security policies can be centrally managed and automation tools can be used to migrate these security and microsegmentation policies where they are required.

6. An excellent investment against lost or stolen data

Finally, zero-trust architectures should be thought of as an insurance policy against lost or stolen data. Considering the cost of a single data breach now exceeds $4 million, the implementation and management of a zero-trust cybersecurity framework to prevent this type of loss should be viewed as money well spent.

Editor's note: This article was updated in May 2024 to improve the reader experience.

Andrew Froehlich is founder of InfraMomentum, an enterprise IT research and analyst firm, and president of West Gate Networks, an IT consulting company. He has been involved in enterprise IT for more than 20 years.