Keeping Data Safe and Secure With Zero-Trust Model

You had an idea and you started executing it. Down the line, it started making money. So, you created a business plan and bootstrapped it for something bigger. Now, you keep your head down and continue building the product; carefully choosing only the tasks that “add” value to the product. It seems like you don’t have any time left for thinking about anything else. This is how a CTO/Co-founder would think while in the early stages of his/her start-up. It's easy to ignore the best practices that one needs to follow to make sure that their data is safe from outside attack.

They keep telling themselves that they’ll get back to it later but that later never comes; not at least in the same form that they would’ve expected.

It’s estimated that at least 45% of small start-ups get hacked and are demanded a ransom in order to leave them alone. Imagine what your customers have to go through when you end up losing their data. Would they still care about the cool app that you have built or would they be suing you for losing their data?

What to do?

If the above scenario frightens you as a start-up, get familiar with the zero-trust model. An idea so simple, yet difficult to execute will make sure that your company’s data is securely saved where it belongs. The idea is to maintain strict identity verification for every person or device trying to access the resources.

By default, no one is trusted, be it an early level employee or the CEO of the company; be it a mobile device trying to log in or a dev with a MacBook. Verification is required for everyone to gain access to any kind of data. Audit logs are maintained for every action performed on each and every resource. Moreover, it works amazingly well for mobile and cloud-based applications.

It's worth mentioning that zero trust model might not work for everyone. As you can guess, it does add a lot of layers between different services which leads to additional cost, complexity, and operational overhead. When you’re at it, do evaluate other models to balance out your needs and make sure to look up once in a while to choose mundane tasks that will help you prepare for any unforeseen disasters.