The Zero Trust Model for SMB IT Security

Protecting your business from cyberattacks is something to take seriously—especially for small businesses. With the speed of their growth and their often-limited budgets, small companies often have to prioritize items and sometimes, having a strong cybersecurity system can feel less important—but that kind of thinking couldn’t be more wrong. Smaller businesses make up almost half of today’s cyberattacks (according to SCORE). It is therefore imperative that they have a strategy in place to protect themselves, and the Zero Trust model may be the answer.

What is Zero Trust?

In years past, when businesses wanted to protect themselves, they focused solely on preventing outside users from gaining access to their network (often referred to as “castle-and-moat security”). But as the number of cyberattacks increased during the early 2000’s, the problem to this method became clear: Once an outsider got inside the network, they had access to everything.

From this problem, the concept of Zero Trust was born. Created in 2010 by John Kindervag, the Zero Trust method has grown in popularity due to its effectiveness. The method is basically a cybersecurity approach focused around the belief that no one should ever be trusted and every move should be monitored. Everything must be verified and anyone trying to connect to a business’s system—inside or outside—must be granted access. Everything under lock and key.

Big companies have the manpower and financial means to have their own IT group and specialty protection services in place to regularly monitor their systems. They can easily put the Zero Trust methodology in place. But what’s so great about Zero Trust, small businesses can also easily implement this theory, but to work for their budget—saving them time and money by avoiding costly breaches. They just need to take the time to create their specialized strategy to best protect their valuable intellectual property and systems.

Implementing Zero Trust

When putting together a Zero Trust strategy, some of the most common components include:

Least-Privilege Access (By granting users access to only what they need—and not everything—it reduces the risk of users access to sensitive parts of a system.)
Microsegmentation (Create zones in your network, where users only have limited or no access to the other zones without authorization.)
Multi-factor Authentication (By asking all employees for multiple pieces of evidence to authenticate them, this will reduce the risk of privileged access credential abuse.)
Set up a Password Vault (This small-business-must ensures only trusted users have access to important account credentials.)
Conduct real-time audits and regular monitoring (When someone from the outside makes several attempts to login, if you have a system to notify you of when this happens, a security breach can be stopped right in its tracks.)

This is just a taste of what a Zero Trust strategy looks like. To find the right security for your company, call us. Great Lakes Computer Corporation can develop an efficient and effective security solution to protect your business data, systems, and users. Call us today!