Zero Trust Architecture for Financial Institutions
Ajay Benadict Antony Raju - · International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research · 2021
Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) has now become the go-to model for improving cybersecurity especially for organizations in the financial sector that deals with sensitive and valuable data. Compared to ordinary security models that are characterized by perimeter protection means, ZTA is based on the “never trust, always verify” paradigm, which implies that threats originate from inside and outside the network. This shift in information security paradigm is essential for the financial services providers as they need to deals with advanced organized cyber threats, stricter compliance measures, and growing opportunities for customer/clients’ data and financial information theft/loss. ZTA implies micro-segmentation, continuous authentication, and using least privilege to control access, for user, devices, and applications are approved only after conducting a thorough check. In this way, with help of ZTA, risks connected with insiders, breaches, and unauthorized access can be reduced in financial institutions. Further, the ZTA implementation enables regulatory compliance since the framework offers sound ways of monitoring and evaluating the access rights to confidential data. These are the general framework of ZTA, how it applies to financial institutions, as well as how leveraging this architecture helps in protecting against current cyber threats.