5 Steps For Preventing Malware With Zero Trust

Zero trust network architecture (ZTNA) and policies are an effective way to successfully prevent cyberattacks across your networks organization-wide. 

If malware infects one part of the network, zero trust ensures that the damage is either detected as early as possible or substantially mitigated by preventing further access to contain the scope of attacks. Let’s take a closer look at zero trust as a solution to malware and cover steps to prevent malware.

Benefits of Zero Trust

Zero Trust offers a robust security framework that benefits organizations across various industries:

• Gradual Implementation: Unlike a complete network overhaul, Zero Trust can be implemented iteratively,leveraging existing tools and technologies.
• Enhanced Threat Protection: By verifying the identity of all remote users, Zero Trust mitigates both internal and external threats.
• Reduced Risk and Improved Visibility: Zero Trust minimizes the threat surface, enhances visibility into user activity, and enables swift response to security breaches.
• Dynamic Access Control: Zero Trust grants secure access privileges based on current use cases, ensuring flexibility and security.
• Lateral Movement Prevention: By limiting movement within the network, Zero Trust hinders attackers’ ability to spread malware.
• Data Exfiltration Prevention: Zero Trust helps safeguard sensitive data from unauthorized access and theft.
• Mitigating Point Solutions: Instead of relying on specific threat detection tools, Zero Trust offers a comprehensive approach to security.
• Improved Security Posture: Zero Trust protects both on-premises and cloud environments, providing a proactive defense against evolving cyber threats.

5 Steps to Preventing Malware With Zero Trust

Here are the 5 steps to prevent malware with zero trust.

#1: Define all vulnerabilities

There are two surfaces to be concerned with when defining vulnerabilities to malware:

• The network attack surface is the totality of all vulnerabilities in connected hardware and software accessible to unauthenticated users.
• The network protection surface is what’s valuable to your business. It’s also known as DAAS, an acronym for the data, applications, assets, and services you need to protect to ensure the normal operation of your organization.

Understanding what comprises DAAS is crucial for defining what’s most susceptible to attack. The most common examples of DAAS that you might evaluate in your protect surface include:

1. Data: Which types of stored data need to be protected? This includes internal data, such as employee information, and external data, like customer transaction receipts. Some of the most common types of data include intellectual property (IP) and proprietary code/processes.
2. Applications. Which applications use sensitive information and which perform mission-critical functions? Applications can include off-the-shelf software or custom/bespoke software. 
3. Assets. Which hardware assets are the most sensitive? Depending on the type of business/organization, this can include POS terminals, medical equipment (including patient wearables), manufacturing equipment, and servers.
4. Services. Which services can attackers exploit to disrupt IT operations? The most common of these services include Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP.

Take time to assess and create a list of how many processes are involved with DAAS in your organization.

#2: Map the flow of network activity

Because zero trust is a flow-based architecture, it’s important to focus on the DAAS to understand the source of security threats and how these DAAS components interact with other resources on the network. 

Enterprises must design their systems to incorporate zero trust controls at each instance that information could be compromised. Understanding the flow of your network by mapping it can help give you a clear view of how to better secure your organization.

To provide a better mapping of a zero trust network architecture, you’ll need to consider three main aspects that encompass what interacts with the network. 

• Users: Zero trust network architecture must map where, when, and how users interact with the entire network. This requires multi-factor authentication of all user identities, applying strict policies that maintain “least access,” and limiting user devices unless verified on an ongoing basis.
• Applications: Every application applying zero trust must be continually monitored at runtime to remove implicit trust with various components of applications when they communicate with one another. 
• Infrastructure: The entire infrastructure should be evaluated to provide a map of where devices and processes connect. This encompasses a macro view of the organization, including routers, the cloud, servers, switches, IoT devices, and the entire supply chain.

#3: Designing a Zero Trust Network

Designing a Zero Trust network involves creating methodologies, policies, and infrastructure that clearly answer the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” of networks. 

This is the “never trust, always verify” aspect of the zero trust model.

In most cases, designing a Zero Trust network requires the use of a Secure Web Gateways to protect users from web-based threats and countermeasures against internal threats. But, because no zero trust networks are identical, custom approaches for Zero Trust Network Access Design are required. 

Designing an actionable plan for ZTNA requires participation from all key IT staff members and policymakers, as well as all stakeholders (including outside vendors). 

A secure Zero Trust network allows outside vendors to access limited resources in order to prevent  vulnerabilities when exchanging data on shared devices.  

#4: Creating zero trust policies

The human element of zero trust is just as important as ZTNA. For this reason, clearly-defined policies, training, and requirements such as the daily use of VPNs are vital when implementing zero trust. 

Because human interaction with potentially malicious emails and attachments can undermine even the best precautions, having a greater awareness of cybersecurity creates another layer of security to prevent malicious software from penetrating internal systems. 

In order to set policies that understand your particular industry and needs, Perimeter 81 offers a zero trust framework that simplifies building and applying policies for the best security.

#5: Continually test and reevaluate network security

ZTNA requires continual testing, monitoring, and maintenance, particularly when an organization incorporates new infrastructure or users. Because zero trust is an iterative process, continually inspecting and logging all traffic provides valuable insights into how to improve the network over time.

Priority lists should be made during pilot programs to focus on the least sensitive data elements first, as malware that could infect these targets will minimize any possible damage. 

Once common issues are resolved in low-stakes systems, deploying zero trust on mission-critical systems and networks will be substantially simpler.

Prevent Malware with Zero Trust from Perimeter81

By splitting user access into its granular pieces, your network benefits from access rules that match the contours of your organization and its users – preventing malware from exploiting your systems.

Perimeter 81’s Cyber Security Experience (CSX) Platform allows you to manage access from its unified dashboard, including:

• Rules
• Network health
• End-user resource

Whether you’re managing secure cloud gateways, multi-regional networks, or just want to prevent malware, Perimeter81’s flexible and powerful platform grants ZTNA across your entire organization in just a few clicks. 

To learn more about our ZTNA offering, get in touch with us today.