What Kind of Cybersecurity Solution Your Business Needs

Intro

In our modern world, all sizes of businesses heavily rely on cloud services, and SaaS applications as these offer scalable, cost-efficient solutions to store data and host applications. Every day, more businesses prefer using multiple cloud services, and SaaS applications. But, the adaptation of these cloud environments can be highly risky, especially when a business doesn’t have adequate cybersecurity solutions to secure these environments.

Additionally, during the last two years, the increasing number of remotely working employees showed the importance of maintaining integrated network security and enabling secure remote access to each remotely working employee. To protect decentralized work environments, businesses should implement solutions that can hide corporate networks from unauthorized entities and provide secure remote access to all users that reach corporate networks and resources.

On top of these, working with third-party contractors, partners, and business associates has become a common practice for the majority of organizations. Without proper security tools, and access policies third-party sites can lead to data breaches and cyberattacks. When all these variables and security risks are taken into account, businesses should implement Remote Access VPN, Domain Name System (DNS) protection, Identity Access Management (IAM), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). Now let’s explain these solutions further.

Remote Access VPN

Remote Access VPN implementation is more important than most people think. Remote Access VPNs create private connections between employees and corporate resources over the public internet. These VPNs hide your organization’s networks and real IP addresses from the public internet and ensure the online privacy and anonymity of your organization and remotely working employees.

Additionally, Remote Access VPNs don't require any on-premise infrastructure, commonly they have user-end configuration, and they can be implemented rapidly. While using these VPNs, employees can simply connect to corporate networks via using client VPN software. Even if your employees use unsecured wifi connections, Remote Access VPN can provide secure remote access.

On top of these, Remote Access VPNs use end-to-end encryption and make all data transfers unreadable and nonsensical to unauthorized entities. While using these VPNs, nobody can spy on your networks, and gain unauthorized access to your resources. For these reasons, Remote Access VPNs are considered indispensable components of cybersecurity postures. Additionally, companies can require a part-time CISO, which can also assist with business computer security.

Remote Access VPNs improve network security and shield all corporate assets. But, if your business is solely dependent on VPNs for secure connections then you might need to integrate multi-factor authentication tools to enable an extra layer of security and mitigate the risks associated with unauthorized access.

Domain Name System (DNS) Protection

On the internet, there are millions of malware and many dangerous websites. When an employee’s device is inspected with malware, cybercriminals can use this employee’s compromised devices to gain unauthorized access to your networks and execute a cyberattack on your business. To prevent your employees from accessing risky websites Domain Name System (DNS) protection tools are necessary.

DNS protection solutions can create an extra layer of security by prohibiting employees from accessing dangerous websites while they are inside the corporate network perimeter. DNS protection solutions can help your business filter content that is unwanted. That’s why these solutions can be quite handy to mitigate security as your employees won’t be able to access dangerous websites that may contain malware while they are working.

Identity & Access Management (IAM)

Today, businesses can’t give unlimited access to employees within the corporate network perimeter, this is extremely risky. Modern-day businesses must limit employees' access and secure their identities to mitigate the cyber risks associated with internal and external entities. IAM solutions can help your business regulate access and authentication policies for your employees.

For instance, while using IAM tools, all employees have to authenticate their identities via multi-factor authentication (MFA), and biometrics. In essence, IAM tools help your business to set access privileges for each user that reaches your resources. To further enhance security, Privileged Access Management (PAM) can be integrated to control and monitor elevated access rights given to critical systems or sensitive data. PAM ensures that users with privileged access are tightly managed, preventing misuse of critical information. While using these tools, your employees will have limited access inside the network perimeter. Your IT admins can put lateral movement policies in place to prevent your employees from moving laterally.

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is a holistic approach to network security, and it has been gaining momentum in the cloud computing market for quite some time. Nowadays, Zero Trust implementation is necessary for most businesses as Zero Trust is one of the best security solutions to enable enhanced security and combat cybercriminals.

Zero Trust embraces the mantra “never trust, always verify”, in this framework all users, devices, and applications are considered compromised, and demand authentication from all entities. It authenticates identities via multi-factor authentication (MFA), biometrics, and single sign-on (SSO); these tools enable an extra layer of security and ensure solely authorized users are inside the network perimeter.

Additionally, Zero Trust is built upon the least privilege principle, meaning employees have limited access to corporate resources and data. Once this framework is implemented, employees can only reach the necessary resources to perform their duties productively. On top of these, Zero Trust employs network segmentation and divides your network into subnetworks. This creates several checkpoints for users, and network segmentation helps IT admins detect the source of attacks, and isolate them rapidly.

Under the Zero Trust framework lateral movement of users is prohibited, and if a user tries to roam inside the network perimeter, IT admins are alerted immediately. Additionally, Zero Trust controls and logs all network traffic, and provides broader visibility and activity monitoring for users, aligning well with the mitre attack framework, providing defenses against a wide range of potential attack vectors and techniques.

By all means, Zero Trust Network Access solutions enable stricter access control and establish enhanced network security. Lastly, the Zero Trust framework can help you improve security in cloud environments as this framework is cloud adaptable and it can keep up with the security requirements of everlastingly changing cloud environments.

Last Remarks

In today’s world, corporate networks are more complicated to safeguard due to the increasing number of remote employees and cloud usage. As of 2022, businesses need to implement modern cybersecurity solutions to safeguard corporate networks and cloud environments. By implementing Remote Access VPN, Domain Name System (DNS) protection, Identity Access Management (IAM), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), your business can establish enhanced networks and safeguard all corporate assets.