Why Your Business Needs Microsoft Zero Trust Security

The rise in remote and hybrid working has made identity and access management more important than ever. You need to be certain of who is accessing your systems and data. Solutions like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), while effective, are not the only solution to help protect your business. Zero Trust Security is the next step in helping protect your data.

What is Zero Trust?

Zero Trust is a holistic and strategic approach to cyber security that eliminates the concept of implicit trust by continually validating every stage of a digital interaction. Anyone attempting to connect to a business’ system, whether they are from inside or outside of the organisation, must be repeatedly verified. This helps to create a secure environment for data and other valuable assets.

How can you achieve Zero Trust security?

By combining different solutions within the Microsoft security suite, you can implement a secure Zero Trust strategy. To achieve true Zero Trust, you need to verify three key factors: identity, access and devices. Microsoft Zero Trust security solutions can help you to do all three.

Verifying identity

As so many cyber threats now involve credential theft, strengthening your identity verification processes is essential. With Azure Authenticator Multi-Factor Authentication, you can ensure that users only have access to the specific corporate resources they have been explicitly approved for, across devices. Azure Active Directory (AAD) takes this one step further by integrating with your firewall for MFA. Additionally, AAD introduces automated identity governance, which speeds up the process of user verification, ensuring that only the right people have access to certain apps and data – and only when they need it.

Verifying access

With Azure Active Directory Conditional access, you can establish strict criteria for application log ins and adaptive policies to stop unrecognised devices, security set ups or connections from accessing your apps. By enacting minimum password criteria and Smart Lockout procedures for unexpected login activity, you can help to tighten your security perimeter and ensure that bad actors are kept out of your systems.

Azure Active Directory also helps to streamline the authentication process, by integrating into over 4,500 SaaS apps for Single Sign-On, giving users one source of truth. With Microsoft Zero Trust solutions, verifying access is simplified, but security is maintained.

Verifying devices

To verify your devices, you can use Microsoft Intune: a crucial component of the Microsoft Zero Trust security stack. Microsoft Intune is a Cloud-based service for mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM). It allows you to control how your organisation’s devices and applications are used by offering a granular administration experience and enabling you to configure specific policies. You can implement security and compliance settings across individual devices or your entire organisation. Intune also allows you to monitor your devices as they are enrolled into your environment and as they first access business resources, while enforcing device security standards and VPN use.

Introduce Microsoft Zero Trust into your wider security strategy

For the most robust protection, Microsoft Zero Trust security solutions should make up just one layer of a comprehensive, multi-layered security strategy.

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