How Does Zero Trust Architecture Strengthen Security in Multi-Cloud Environments?

Multi-cloud environments are becoming the new norm for businesses. By combining services from multiple cloud providers, you can reduce costs, get more out of your system and gain needed flexibility. Unfortunately, multi-cloud systems are also harder to secure, but zero trust architecture offers a solution.

The zero trust model centers around trusting nothing and verifying everything. That means restricting privileges so that no one and nothing can access what it doesn’t need and requiring thorough authentication to grant that access. While it may seem like overkill at first, it has several important security benefits, especially for multi-cloud environments.

1. Visibility by design

One of the biggest advantages of zero trust architecture for multi-cloud is that it promotes visibility. When you spread your resources across multiple vendors, it’s hard to see everything at once, making it more difficult to secure them. Consequently, 47% of multi-cloud adopters say a lack of visibility is their biggest security challenge.

Zero trust architecture fixes this issue because it creates full transparency. Enforcing its tight access privileges means using continuous monitoring solutions, providing real-time visibility into all cloud operations. To support zero trust’s level of restriction, you have to map out your multi-cloud environment in detail, giving you a handy data map as a side benefit.

2. Minimized third-party risks

Zero trust architecture also addresses third-party risks, which can be prevalent in multi-cloud environments. Almost every cloud system involves some third-party exposure because you rely on an outside service to host your data. Multi-clouds, by nature, include several third parties to juggle.

The danger here is that any weakness in any of these partners affects your security. Considering 98.3% of organizations do business with a third party that’s recently suffered a breach, those risks are hard to overlook.

Zero trust helps by implementing the principle of least privilege. Under this protection philosophy, any party can only access what it needs to do its job. That way, third-party vulnerabilities won’t affect the whole system.

3. Simplified policy management

Another complication with all those third parties is that enforcing security policies across these different environments becomes difficult. While some providers can enable more than 95% uptime, they each work differently. They may have different policies and security controls, so it’s hard to ensure each has the same level of protection.

Zero trust simplifies things by holding everything to the same standard. If a system can’t fit within zero trust’s tight access restrictions and continuous monitoring, you don’t use it. As counterintuitive as it may seem, by implementing more security controls, you simplify their execution.

4. Regulatory compliance

This simplified policy management is also great for regulatory compliance. Laws like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) impose strict requirements on how you can store and use data. Ensuring all your cloud partners meet these standards can be tricky in a conventional multi-cloud environment.

Zero trust implements more protections than many legal standards require. Because it makes it easier to enforce policies across your entire environment and promotes transparency by design, it also becomes easier to ensure everyone meets their end of the bargain. That’s a huge help when juggling complex regulations and avoiding fines.

5. Faster responses

Finally, zero trust architecture improves response times in a multi-cloud environment. It takes __an average of three days__to discover a cybersecurity incident. When you’re monitoring multiple disparate systems, it can take even longer, giving attackers plenty of time to cause damage.

Zero trust addresses this problem in a few ways. First, it makes it easier to spot breaches by promoting transparency. Second, unusual network behavior stands out more because everyone has to adhere to a higher standard. Because zero trust treats everything like a breach until proven otherwise, less can slip through the cracks.

Finally, zero trust usually involves automated continuous monitoring. These tools can spot and contain suspicious behavior as soon as it occurs, letting you stop a breach before you lose too much.

Multi-cloud environments need zero trust architecture

Multi-cloud environments have many advantages, from cost efficiency to operational flexibility. Zero trust lets you capitalize on those benefits without sacrificing security.

As security standards grow and multi-cloud becomes more popular, zero trust becomes all the more important. Taking advantage of this potential today could be a crucial step in ensuring a business can thrive tomorrow.

Sources:

• 2022 Cloud Security Report, Fortinet
• Close Encounters of the Third (and Fourth) Party Kind
• 5 Cloud Issues and How to Fix Them
• Cyber Incident Response Timeline U.S. 2022