How are you managing the risk presented by your employees using personal devices to access corporate resources outside the office?
The reality of an increasingly remote workforce means your valuable data and information is being requested from devices you may not have previously authenticated or authorized, or assets that have not previously met corporate standards or compliance.
As we’ll explore, implementing zero trust network access (ZTNA) for your organization can greatly reduce the risks presented by users, applications, and devices requesting access to your applications and data.
We’ll also highlight how resourcing your bespoke security solution can save you time and money.
Why Your Business Needs ZTNA
Today’s threat actors are both resilient and resourceful, ready to pounce on vulnerabilities in the infrastructure of any organization. If your employees are accessing your resources and applications from multiple devices — and potentially multiple locations — finding those vulnerabilities is unfortunately easier than ever for malicious invasion.
The days of an office-centric worker are gone, and network-based VPN just can’t cover the myriad of users logging on to your corporate environment. Your IT teams can’t possibly secure and authenticate every laptop or device attempting to access your data — and surely not all of them were provided by your business.
Just one unauthorized user could blow the door wide open for attackers to move unrestricted throughout your entire network.
ZTNA offers a comprehensive secure access solution, providing granularity and dexterity with adaptive security processes. Utilizing adaptive access, data loss protection, and threat protection, these solutions can be precisely tailored to secure your data and resources.
- Adaptive access involves granting your workforce authentication based on contextual algorithms. These security solutions use deep intelligence to analyze the user, device, and risk profile for each attempted login to your resources.
- Data loss protection ensures that users are unable to send sensitive or critical information outside the corporate network. By keeping your information housed internally, you’re helping to lower the possibility of data breaches that could not only affect your productivity and integrity but also your bottom line. Various data protection regulations levy costly fines and penalties in the event of data loss.
- Threat protection protocols like those employed by Microsoft for Windows 10 are an invaluable tool in the battle to protect your resources and assets. ZTNA continuously monitors your devices and assets, and performs authentication and authorization checks each time access is requested.
The process of ZTNA implementation is often facilitated using cloud-based technology by an authorized, professional vendor like Citrix.
Still not convinced that your business needs the monitoring and protection offered by ZTNA service solutions? Consider the following case study, highlighting the importance of adaptive access.
Location-Aware Adaptive Authentication with MFA Scenario
An employee located in Texas works in logistics and operations and uses the same password for all personal and corporate apps. His personal email account is hacked, and his password is compromised. Before he changes his passwords, someone located outside the country attempts to access the company’s expense and invoice management application with the intention of wiring themselves a small recurring payment of $75 per month to avoid detection.
What’s at Risk?
Reused passwords and user error make it easy for hackers to access sensitive data.
How Citrix ZTNA Protects
Citrix’s ZTNA solution detects an unfamiliar location and suspects an unauthorized user. The attempt is automatically challenged using multi-factor authentication, blocking bad actors’ unauthorized access to the company’s assets. Citrix offers adaptive authentication out of the box, allowing adaptive policies to determine dynamic login, without using a third-party solution. This means a more simple and seamless solution for the customer.
ZTNA Services Make Security Easy
Employing a ZTNA solution leaves the heavy lifting of cybersecurity protocols to the professionals. Your workforce will be able to continue working remotely, while adaptive authentication and adaptive access control policies execute diligently in the background.
After all, the employee from our earlier example may have been one just-about-finished task away from changing that password … but can you guarantee all of your employees will act fast enough to prevent a data breach?
A ZTNA service takes the ever-evolving needs of updating and monitoring your valuable resources off of your hands, while providing monitoring platforms and insights that allow you to keep an eye on the key protocols put in place to protect them.
Left alone to task your workforce with complex cybersecurity solutions, you’d need to cover the following bases for all endpoint devices and multi-cloud applications:
- Access protection to all IT-managed apps
- Adaptive, context-vetted zero trust access to all resources, each with unique granularity and security controls
- The protection of your assets and data via web application firewall, bot management, API protection, and DDoS
- Cloud-based security for your workforce’s internet access, regardless of the endpoint device being used
It sounds like a lot, and it is. Network and application security has grown increasingly complex. That’s why implementing ZTNA as a service for your business is the surefire way to go. Combining the above functionality into a comprehensive, unified platform, you’ll ensure your cybersecurity portfolio is tailored precisely to your organization, and delivered with ease via a trusted vendor.
Your assets deserve top-shelf protection from threats that could be chipping away at your bottom line.
After all, you’re an expert in your chosen field — when customers need answers, they come to you. When you need protection for your resources and infrastructure, you can come to Citrix.
Citrix ZTNA Services
While many providers offer ZTNA security, only Citrix uses the latest technology to secure access to all your business applications from anywhere. From web-based, SaaS, and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) to client/server, your public cloud-based, and on-premises apps are fully protected.
We encourage you to read more of our comprehensive use cases. It’s packed with real-world scenarios just like the one the poor employee found himself in, inadvertently costing a business just like yours incrementally over time.
After learning how Citrix can safeguard your organization, resources, and assets, contact us to learn how cost-effective ZTNA solutions can ensure nightmare scenarios are just something you read about in a particularly informative e-book.
