Taking advantage of trust—not just the sort conferred by authentication, but also the sort conferred by human nature—is one of the oldest tricks attackers know. It persists today as one of the most effective ways they can position themselves to move laterally in your environment. To deny them that opportunity, you need to take trust out of the equation. A zero trust architecture enforces access policies based on context—including the user's role and location, their device, and the data they are requesting—to block inappropriate access and lateral movement throughout your environment. Zero trust requires visibility and control over your environment's users and traffic, including that which is encrypted; monitoring and verification of traffic between parts of the environment; and strong multifactor authentication (MFA) methods beyond passwords. Critically, in a zero trust architecture, a resource's network location isn't the biggest factor in its security posture anymore. Instead of rigid network segmentation, your data, workflows, services, and such are protected by software-defined microsegmentation, enabling you to keep them secure anywhere. Read more.