Guarding Your Data: Embrace Zero Trust Security with AccessFlow

As enterprise security perimeters extend outside the traditional corporate network owing to remote work and cloud technologies, protecting sensitive business data and systems has become a significant challenge. Establishing centralized and strict access control over the sensitive business data and resources is equally challenging for your IT and security teams amidst the hybrid, complex IT environments. The Zero Trust model of cybersecurity provides an attractive proposition to protect modern enterprise networks and sensitive business information.

In essence, the Zero Trust security strategy promotes the idea that no internal or external user should be trusted by default, and strict verification should be applicable for each before permitting access to enterprise resources. With the global average cost per data breach amounting to 4.45 million USD, adopting this modern security approach is undoubtedly a viable solution for businesses. With modern IAM solutions in place, companies can build an effective identity driven Zero Trust Security strategy.

AccessFlow, built natively and certified on the ServiceNow platform, is one such modern solution that empowers businesses to enhance their Zero Trust security strategy while ensuring data protection by granting the right access to the right users. It automates the entire identity lifecycle, enforces strong user authentication and least privilege controls, and provides deeper access visibility to safeguard your enterprise data and infrastructure from cyberthreats. Before we dive into AccessFlow and how it boosts your Zero Trust security, let’s first understand:   

What is Zero Trust?  

Zero Trust is a modern security framework that helps businesses protect their sensitive data and digital infrastructure from ransomware, insider threats, and other cyber threats. Introduced by Forrester’s research analyst John Kindervag, the Zero Trust concept is based on the notion that any enterprise user, device, or application, whether inside or outside, presents an inherent security risk and hence can’t be trusted implicitly. This model is a significant evolution over the traditional network security model that automatically trusted users or devices residing inside the organization network, elevating the risk of insider attacks, data thefts, and other security incidents.  

The Zero Trust approach to security requires you to continuously monitor and validate internal and external users and their associated permissions before permitting access to sensitive data and systems in your organization. It involves the enforcement of a combination of next-generation cybersecurity technologies, including, but not limited to, multi-factor authentication, role-based access, micro-segmentation, robust end-point security, and privileged access management, to safeguard your enterprise from bad actors. 

Core Principles of Zero Trust 

Based on the NIST 800-207 standard, the Zero Trust framework is driven by the following core principles:  

• Never Trust, Always Verify: Every access request, whether coming from inside or outside the organization, should be strictly authenticated and authorized.  
• Enforce Principle of Least Privilege: Enterprise users or devices should receive the minimum level of access through enforcement of least privilege controls 
• Minimize the Blast Radius: Organizations should reduce their attack surface and blast radius through security controls like micro-segmentation and least privilege access 
• Continually Monitor and Optimize: Organizations should actively monitor and adjust their security controls to adapt to the evolving threat landscape 

How AccessFlow Helps Strengthen Your Zero Trust Security Approach 

Verify Explicitly through Robust Authentication and Authorization 

AccessFlow empowers you to enforce Zero Trust’s core principle of “Never Trust, Always Verify”, all in a user-friendly way. With robust user authentication and authorization, it helps thoroughly validate a user identity before giving access to company data and systems. It maximizes security and ensures a great user experience with single sign-on and multi-factor authentication support. In addition, it gives you deeper visibility into user roles and the privileges they hold. This, in turn, helps you make better access decisions and prevent risks like data theft and insider attacks.    

Deliver Just Enough Access through Least Privilege Controls  

The “Least Privilege” principle of Zero Trust emphasizes permitting the minimum level of access to users necessary to perform their job duties in your enterprise to minimize undue risk. AccessFlow helps you achieve this by granting just enough, timely access to employees using role-based access controls and risk-based adaptive policies. Further, it automatically adjusts permissions as users switch job roles in your organization to prevent access overprovisioning scenarios. Not only that, AccessFlow supports the creation of SOD policies and automatically detects conflicts against those policies, preventing you from assigning conflicting role permissions to enterprise users to avoid potential risks like data theft, fraud, and compliance failures. 

Continuously Monitor and Adjust Access with Advanced Analytics and Reporting   

Zero Trust security approach also demands organizations to continuously monitor their access policies and security controls to stay up to date with emerging threats and avoid potential risks. AccessFlow can help you attain granular visibility into user identities and their associated roles and permissions using advanced dashboard visualizations and data-rich reports. This helps you ensure that your ongoing access controls comply with your latest access policies. Furthermore, AccessFlow allows you to schedule automated access reviews to identify and revoke suspicious permissions to prevent risks like unauthorized access, privilege abuse, and data theft. Regularly reviewing and validating user permissions also assists you in meeting compliance and regulatory requirements.   

Reduce the Attack Surface with Dormant Account Visibility   

Zero Trust underscores the importance of limiting your organizational attack surface to minimize the loss of sensitive data in case of cyberattacks. AccessFlow assists you in reducing the attack path in your organization through dormant account management functionality. It allows you to identify and deactivate inactive user accounts in your organization, which can be exploited by attackers to steal sensitive business data or launch cyberattacks. Furthermore, it prevents the risk of overprovisioned accounts through least privilege access controls and automated access reviews, further narrowing down the scope of security breaches. 

Elevate Your Organization’s Cybersecurity Approach with AccessFlow 

In a nutshell, modern IAM solutions provide a viable defense for enterprises to safeguard their IT infrastructure from cyberattacks. From offering centralized access visibility to providing secure access to continuously monitoring access risks across hybrid IT environments, IAM tools help boost the overall Zero Trust security strategy. AccessFlow, built on the robust ServiceNow platform, is one such unified, automated, and compliant IAM solution that is designed to address the Zero Trust security needs of modern enterprises operating with cloud-first hybrid business models. It streamlines and automates identity lifecycle management and enforces strict access controls to secure your enterprise data and systems from bad actors.

To know more about AccessFlow and how it can take access management and cybersecurity to the next level in your organization, reach out to us at information@iamaccessflow.com.