What if the office is closed tomorrow?
Jul 28th, 2019 by Jesper Kråkhede
Here is a little exercise for you. Imagine that tomorrow morning nobody can come into the office. Not for a day, but for weeks. It doesn´t really matter why. A fire, a flooded basement, a strike in the public transport or something else entirely. Everybody has to work from home.
How does your security look then? For many companies the honest answer is: Not good. The security model is built on the assumption that the users are inside the building, on the corporate network, behind the firewall. The VPN is sized for a few hundred travelling sales people, not for the whole company. And the moment everyone is on their home network, sharing it with the kids´ gaming consoles and a smart fridge, most of your protection is gone.
This is where Zero Trust shows its value. If access is based on a strong identity and a healthy, managed device instead of where the user sits, it doesn´t matter much if the user is in the office, at home or at a café. The same checks apply. Applications published through the identity platform instead of the VPN, devices managed from the cloud and data that is protected wherever it is stored.
And if you never need it? Then you have still made life a lot harder for the attackers. Not a bad deal.
Build it before you need it. When the office is closed it´s too late.