Blog

Tag: continuous monitoring

Enhance your data security with the Fasoo Zero Trust Data Security platformAre you struggling to implement Zero Trust across siloed data-centric tool sets?  You’re not alone.  Analysts say this is one of the major roadblocks to Zero Trust uptake.

The hybrid workplace left security teams scrambling to deploy new point solutions, adding to an existing array of data protection tools. These disparate solutions sit at ingress/egress points (DLP/CASB/EPP) applying rules and analytics where sensitive data intersects with users, applications, and devices.

It’s where data intersects and crosses these siloed solutions that cause real problems for Zero Trust. This interrupts the continuity of data flow, visibility is lost, and policy misconfigurations occur.

 

Zero Trust relies on context about users, applications, data, and devices everywhere, always available

Vital to Zero Trust is continuous monitoring of context to detect anomalous events. It’s the basis for adaptive risk assessments that decide if, and how much access a user merits. It won’t work if you lose sight of sensitive files and their use.

But that’s the world of the hybrid workplace. Users extract data from corporate databases, insert it into ad-hoc documents on endpoints anywhere, move it to the cloud, and share it with external partners. Sensitive files easily find their way to unmanaged devices and unsanctioned cloud services, out of the purview of corporate control.

It’s clear security and operations teams need new approaches and methods to move forward with Zero Trust initiatives.

 

Consolidate siloed data-centric processes in conjunction with implementing Zero Trust principles

Consolidation of data-centric processes into Data Security Platforms (DSP) is underway and teams can leverage this trend to accelerate Zero Trust initiatives. Gartner projects that by 2024, 30% of enterprises will adopt Data Security Platforms, up from less than 5% in 2019.

A platform better implements control and security policies using a centralized policy engine that spans all data-centric processes. The integration and continuity of processes remove siloes to enhance data visibility and make tracking more consistent. This allows you to leverage automation across the platform to make security transparent to users and operations less complex.

Forrester Research recommends a platform first establish a data control foundation with core processes. One that includes unifying data discovery, classification, control, and some form of data loss prevention and obfuscation, like encryption, as a start. The deployment of this initial core provides your team key insights into where sensitive data originates, travels, and is accessed.

A DSP delivers an infrastructure that makes it easier for security teams to implement Zero Trust across your organization’s hybrid workplace.

 

Recognize Zero Trust principles set higher standards for sensitive data control and protection

Many modern DSPs emerged during the move to a hybrid workplace, formed by traditional vendors adding adjacent technologies. Examples include DLP vendors integrating classification and alternatively classification vendors adding protection. While all are steps forward, today’s DSP capabilities vary widely and can leave Zero Trust initiatives at risk.

Zero Trust principles set a higher bar for sensitive data. It requires enhanced control, visibility, and monitoring of data that today’s traditional solutions struggle to deliver.

It’s no longer enough to keep layering MFA techniques onto user access. It’s just as critical to control how the data is used once users gain authorized access. With today’s solutions, the user has a free pass to copy, cut, paste, share, and store sensitive files as they wish.

Explicit trust requires data never be unprotected. DLP and behavior analytics query and assess files to make sure you follow rules or check for anomalous events, but don’t usually protect the data itself. Exposed data is exfiltrated and goes undetected for weeks if not months.

Security teams need to pull back the covers on DSP and understand the underlying technology. While all deliver platform advantages from tool consolidation, capabilities to achieve Zero Trust standards can be limited.

 

A true Zero Trust Data Security Platform to make security stronger and easier

For over 20 years, Fasoo developed and consolidated data-centric capabilities as we continually work to meet our customer demands for lifecycle management of sensitive data. Fasoo now leads the industry to converge Zero Trust with an advanced Data Security Platform.

Fasoo consolidates core data-centric processes to deliver the benefits of a DSP. Centralized policies, deeper data visibility, and automation all contribute to more effective and less complex operations. And within this infrastructure, Fasoo has built the most advanced control and security methods to comprehensively implement Zero Trust standards.

Our advanced methods differ from traditional solutions. We push controls and security closest to what you need to protect, the file itself, so safeguards travel with the sensitive data. Binding controls and protection to the file provide deep visibility, data is never out of sight, and policies are consistent across the hybrid workplace.

The file is the new micro perimeter where we not only control access but control how you use the data. If I simply need to view a document, why let me extract or share the data? Granular rights enforce document controls that explicitly protect data and enable least privilege Zero Trust principles.

Protection of the data itself needs to be present always. Encryption is an obvious need for an explicit-based model. It automatically encrypts a sensitive file when a user creates or modifies it – that’s true adherence to never trust, always verify principles. Don’t ask the new hire to decide.

Fasoo’s Platform delivers this and a complete suite of advanced methods that implement Zero Trust standards. Fasoo’s approach is superior and it’s why security teams select our Platform as their path to Zero Trust.

 

Learn more about Fasoo’s Zero Trust Data Security Platform

Learn more about the full suite of advanced data-centric methods Fasoo employs to truly achieve Zero Trust for data security.

Understand the core data-centric processes Fasoo’s Platform consolidates and the benefits of a Data Security Platform.

Read how one CISO used a quick-take playbook to prioritize and down-select 2023 Zero Trust Initiatives and accelerate the security team’s journey to Zero Trust.

Quick takeaways on how Fasoo enables zero trust data securityEnterprise Digital Rights Management (EDRM) encrypts files, enforces user access, and controls data in use – no implicit assumptions. It sets a least privilege baseline for sensitive data on which you can dynamically grant increasing levels of explicit access. It’s what Zero Trust is all about.

Inside the perimeter, implicit trust was turned on its head by digital transformation and the hybrid workplace. Zero Trust’s explicit, least privilege, continuous monitoring, and adaptive risk assessment are the new standards for data security in today’s world.

You likely have some set of DLP or Insider Risk Management tools, but these fall well short of the new standards. So how do you move to Zero Trust Data Security?

Learn more about how to bring DLP up to Zero Trust standards.

Consider integrating EDRM. It fortifies your existing tools with strong protection methods and explicit controls. And with Fasoo’s approach to EDRM, gain the high-resolution data visibility Zero Trust continuous monitoring and adaptive access standards demand.

7 Quick Takeaways

Here are 7 quick takeaways on how EDRM and Fasoo can set you on the path to Zero Trust Data Security.

1. File-Centric, Location Agnostic

Go to the source itself. The file. Quit chasing and trying to enforce data security and control at every new place the file may travel, reside, or a user accesses it. Traffic cops at every ingress and egress point are old school, perimeter thinking. Bind all security and privacy controls to the file itself so you can persistently enforce enterprise safeguards in the cloud, WFH, on BYOD, and at supply chain partners.

2. File Encryption

It seems obvious for an explicit-based model. But today’s DLP tactics are mostly a monitor-alert approach while you expose the data to risk. Instead, automatically encrypt sensitive files when users create or modify them. Use centralized policies and hold the keys so users don’t control your data. Use this no-nonsense, least privilege baseline to build explicit access to sensitive data.

3. User Access

You don’t want an insider wandering through an entire repository or even folders – it’s too implicit. Most insider breaches are mistakes in handling sensitive data, like storing it in the wrong location. It’s better to enforce explicit access decisions, for each file, every time a user opens it. That’s Zero Trust Data Security.

4. Control Data in Use

But what happens after an insider gains access to a file? It’s a free pass to copy, cut, paste share, and store sensitive corporate data as they wish. That’s not Zero Trust. If I simply need to read the document, why let me extract or share the data? A supply chain partner needs to edit a file. But why let them copy, print, or store the document locally? Use explicit granular document rights to enforce Zero Trust least privileges and control your data in use.

5. Visibility

Visibility is knowing how your data is used, how it moves about, and what users do with it. Zero Trust relies on data visibility for continuous monitoring. Not easy in today’s hybrid workplace with existing tools. At best, its reliance and reconciliation of disparate security, network, application, repository, and endpoint logs. Better to use file-centric controls to make the file self-reporting, recording all lifetime interactions to a Central File Log no matter where it travels or who accesses it.

6. Continuous Monitoring

Just because you had access before doesn’t matter. That would be implicit trust. Zero Trust wants an explicit, context-aware decision each time. To do so, you need to monitor user identity, prior file interactions, devices, times, and places for each of the thousand if not millions of documents in your inventory. In real-time. Impossible? The Central File Log makes it easy, staging up-to-date, file-specific log data for Zero Trust monitoring.

7. Adaptive Access

Access is no longer an “all or none” decision. More “if so, how much.” It must adapt based on current circumstances, informed by the findings of continuous monitoring, and enabled by deep file visibility. Once you assess the risk, employ a wide range of granular document controls that can enforce the appropriate Zero Trust privileges.

Start on Zero Trust Data Security Now

Adopting a least privilege, explicit access to your sensitive data is key to protect your intellectual property and comply with privacy regulations. Integrating EDRM fortifies your existing tools with strong protection methods and explicit controls that are the cornerstones of Zero Trust Data Security.

As users and data continue to move around, protecting the data itself with these strong controls is your best bet to protect your business and your customers.

 

RELATED READING
Learn more about Enterprise Digital Rights Management
Learn more about how Fasoo implements Zero Trust Data Security

Categories
Book a meeting