Zero Trust in Practice: How IAM and PAM Strengthen Security and Add Business Value

As the complexity of digital corporate environments rises, many organizations find that the traditional “castle-and-moat” security model provides an insufficient level of protection against modern cyberthreats. Instead of trusting everyone in your network by default, the current best practice is to adopt the Zero Trust framework which advocates always verifying every access request.

Find out how companies can benefit from the Zero Trust security model and how identity and access management (IAM) and privileged access management (PAM) functionalities boost your organization’s security.

Cybersecurity challenges for modern networks

The digital landscape companies have to navigate has drastically evolved over the past years. The virtual space they need to secure has grown as network boundaries blurred with the rise of remote work, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions and multi-cloud environments. This has led to an increased number of entry points that attackers can use to gain unauthorized access to data and systems. Additionally, corporate ecosystems also often include a high number of accounts with privileged access and non-human identities like APIs and shared system accounts.

This complexity of internal ecosystems leads to a higher risk of credential theft, lateral movement attacks and data breaches. The traditional approach to cybersecurity where companies rely on a strong firewall and trust users and devices within its security perimeter provides insufficient risk mitigation. To ensure the safety of their networks and resources, businesses need a security framework that promotes stricter access management and identity verification. That’s where Zero Trust comes in.

What is the Zero Trust security model?

Zero Trust is a security approach built around a core principle: Never trust, always verify. It assumes that security threats and breaches can come from both outside and inside an organization and that no user or access attempt should be implicitly trusted. According to IBM, “organizations that did not apply a zero trust approach paid 19% more in breach costs for an average of USD 5.04 million.”

To mitigate security threats, companies with Zero Trust explicitly verify and authorize every access request based on its contextual data, including identity, device, location and risk level. While there are various access control models that you can use for these mechanisms – such as the Bell–LaPadula, Biba, Clark–Wilson and Chinese Wall models – the goal of this strategy is to ensure data integrity and data protection.

One strategy that is often paired with Zero Trust is attribute-based access control (ABAC). It’s an authorization method that grants security permissions based on specific attributes of users, the assets they want to access, actions they want to take and environments they operate in. ABAC solutions assess these values and authorize access that meets established rules and attribute combinations.

Another element of the Zero Trust framework is to implement dynamic access policies. It’s recommended to have a process in place to establish when certain users need a specific level of permissions. These access policies should be provisioned in an adaptive way so that permissions are always up-to-date and are not excessively granted.

Integrating identity and access management and privileged access management with the Zero Trust model

While Zero Trust offers strategies and principles to drive your approach to cybersecurity, identity and access management (IAM) and privileged access management (PAM) functionalities give you practical tools to implement the framework. Strengthening your access management helps you protect your resources and minimize the risk of attacks exploiting incorrect IAM.

IAM functionalities in the Zero Trust model

Identity management centralization. User credentials should be stored, managed and monitored in one environment that centralized password policies and identity authentication. Successful verification within a single, secure interface should provide users with access to the systems they need, rather than require users to sign into several different systems. The centralized approach makes it easier to consistently enforce validation mechanisms like single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), role-based access control (RBAC) and ABAC. It also streamlines identity management and threat response.

Least privilege access control. Even after successful verification, users should only be granted the necessary minimum access to minimize attack surface and scope.

Continuous risk and session verification. Actively monitoring your environments – for example, by using security information and event management (SIEM) – is a key element for both preventive control and post-event analysis. It enables you to identify any suspicious activity and react immediately. But it also creates a log archive which you can audit after a security incident to find and analyze the source of a breach.

PAM functions in Zero Trust

Privileged account audit and control. Regularly examine role and access permissions to adjust rights elevation and limit accounts with admin privileges. It’s also a good idea to implement a process for approving higher-level access requests and personalizing permissions for users according to what they actually need to access. Account control should also include activity monitoring so that interactions with documents, for instance, can be traced to specific users, according to the non-repudiation principle.

Just-in-time access, session recording and session isolation. Grant users temporary access to specific applications for only as long as they need it to complete their task. Use logging mechanisms to keep a record of all sessions to detect anomalies and audit access. Make sure sessions are isolated to contain potential attacks.

Automated access revocation. Automate the process of revoking access to users based on rules, roles or even employment status. This helps ensure that your systems don’t include – for example, past employees or business partners – with more access privileges than they should have at the time.

The benefits of implementing Zero Trust, IAM and PAM

Zero Trust reduces the risk of data breaches by encouraging companies to deploy access monitoring and control throughout their systems. Stricter data protection, identity management and better access auditability help companies avoid fines or penalties that result from failing to comply with privacy regulations like GDPR and NIS2.

Organizations with a mature Zero Trust framework and strong IAM/PAM can respond to incidents faster and tend to achieve lower total cost of ownership (TCO) of security operations. This is made possible by automating access management, which decreases operational costs.

IAM and PAM also supports businesses in boosting productivity by streamlining the onboarding and offboarding of new employees and partners through established, automated access policies. These functionalities also introduce improved audit and compliance reporting capabilities.

Overall, the strengthened cybersecurity and access control enhances your company’s qualitative reputation. As a result, it increases your customers’ and business partners’ trust because they know you keep their data safe, stay compliant with data protection laws and proactively minimize breach risk.

Cyberthreats Zero Trust can help mitigate

Adopting the Zero Trust model might require infrastructure updates or stakeholder buy-in, but it’s an essential step towards protecting your organization from modern digital dangers.

Example 1

The combination of Zero Trust and stronger access management can help you avoid credential theft attacks by fostering better IAM. Malicious actors can exploit systems where too many accounts are insufficiently secured (e.g., they lack multi-factor authentication) and have too many privileges or where environments lack segmentation. This way attackers can access cloud environment configurations and modify them to steal data.

But with Zero Trust in place, your systems make these kinds of attacks much more difficult. The framework enforces explicit authorization so in this example, multi-factor authentication would be enforced, and accounts would have minimal necessary privileges. The attack scope can be further reduced by segmenting environments and closely monitoring each session.

Example 2

Excessive internal privileges can also be used by threat actors to gain unauthorized access to customer data by hijacking sessions. When a system lacks account separation and sufficient session monitoring and attackers breach HTTP token security, they can use privileged accounts – for example, customer support accounts – to access or even download files.

To avoid this scenario, organizations implementing Zero Trust limit account privileges to what’s absolutely essential and separate environments to further restrict access. Constant identity verification and role separation also reduce the risk of unauthorized access and hinder the scope of a potential attack.

Protecting your systems from modern threats with Zero Trust and strong IAM/PAM

While even a combination of Zero Trust, IAM and PAM can’t eliminate all risks, it significantly reduces your organization’s attack surface, leaving attackers with fewer entry points to exploit. It’s an important element of a strong cybersecurity strategy that increases your company’s resilience to modern threats.

The Zero Trust model should be adopted gradually – starting with establishing least privilege policies and implementing internal privilege access, then expanding it to third-party access management, multifactor authentication and monitoring. It’s also important to train your employees and foster a new cybersecurity culture aligned with the Zero Trust principles to ensure a successful implementation.

A security audit that examines your current access setup is usually a good place to start identifying areas for improvement. If you’re looking for support from experienced security experts to run a comprehensive audit for your company and provide recommendations for strengthening your system safety, get in touch with us here.

FAQ

What is the Zero Trust model?

Zero Trust is a security approach in which companies assume that security threats and breaches can come from both outside and inside an organization. It enforces explicit identity verification and least privilege access.

How can companies benefit from adopting Zero Trust?

Zero Trust helps reduce the risk of data breaches, strengthens security, decreases operational costs and increases customer trust.

What IAM functionalities support the Zero Trust framework?

To improve IAM, while adopting Zero Trust, companies need to centralize identity management, follow the least privilege access principle and ensure continuous risk and session verification.

What PAM functions can be integrated within the Zero Trust model?

Companies can deploy systems for privileged account control and audit, implement just-in-time access, monitor and isolate sessions and automate access revocation.