Opinion: Era of transformation and zero trust security

By Keunjin Kim, CEO of Spiceware
Dec. 16, 2022 7:58PM KST

The recent Russia-Ukraine war began roughly an hour before the Russian invasion when a malware attacked Viasat, a private American satellite company used by Ukrainian forces, and attempted to disable Ukrainian military communications. The incident has shown that it is important to prepare for cyberattacks as well as for the shells and missiles of physical attacks in times of modern warfare.

Businesses also face new security threats. Digitalization has accelerated in all industries, and boundaries between organizations have disappeared, while attack surfaces for cybercriminals have widened. For example, remote working tools for collaboration and efficiency have exposed a large amount of internal information to malicious outsiders. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident, in which the attackers forced the largest oil pipeline operator in the U.S. to shut down for several days, shows that the latest digital technologies have not just contributed to digital transformation, but also increased the possibilities of cyberattacks.

As security threats increase, it is no longer sufficient to secure networks with existing security methods, which usually rely on a firewall. This is the reason that zero trust security was announced in 2010. In order to quickly detect threats and prepare for upcoming attacks, it has now become a global trend, starting with U.S. President Joe Biden choosing zero trust as a national cybersecurity strategy through an executive order as soon as he took office last year. The technology research firm Gartner anticipated that more than 60% of all companies in the world will depart from virtual private networks and adopt the new concept of security based on zero trust by 2023.

Zero trust focuses on eliminating unnecessary or excessive access rights, removing unconditional trust in users. If the current security has focused on defending perimeters of separated networks, zero trust security shifts the paradigm, focusing on user and data centered defense. It revokes the implicit trust granted to assets and users’ accounts. Instead, it authenticates all devices and users that try to access data assets at every step of the way, granting minimal access to information. Moreover, data access rights are constantly verified. Due to this process, hackers cannot easily bypass various security solutions of a target company's internal network even when they have obtained remote access rights or employee account information. This allows real-time anomaly detection and quick discovery, helping administrators respond to unauthorized access as soon as possible.

According to IBM's data breach cost report in 2022, the most used attack method from March 2021 to March 2022 was stolen or compromised credentials, at an average cost of up to $4.50 million. It took 327 days on average to recognize and respond to an attack, the longest respond period among all attack methods. When it comes to zero trust, the average cost of a data breach for organizations that have deployed zero trust security was $4.15 million. Organizations that have not deployed zero trust security recorded $5.10 million. Furthermore, the average cost of a data breach for organizations that have completed zero trust implementation was $3.45 million. For organizations that were in early-stage implementation of zero trust, the average cost of a data breach was $4.96 million.

Digital transformation has arrived. In biology, the term “transformation” refers to a process of foreign DNA penetrating, binding with existing DNA, and composing new genetic properties. Likewise, it is time for a new form of security, which is developed from conventional security, to respond to the rapidly changing age.

kj.kim@spiceware.io Follow the author

About Spiceware

Spiceware protects customers’ assets with foolproof cloud data security technology. The company provides a comprehensive cloud-based data protection service for its global customers. One is an easy-to-use zero trust security service for cloud. It enables device and ID authentication, data backup and recovery, data encryption, access history management, and access control, while the proxy server provides real-time protection against malware and phishing attacks for customers who use confidential data.