Microsoft has been promoting cybersecurity initiatives for quite some time. In September, it released new Threat Protection APIs, and this month, it announced plans to promote cybersecurity awareness month.
However, with the pandemic resulting in numerous people across various industries working remotely, many have been resorting to Zero Trust security models. Now, Microsoft has announced the launch of its Zero Trust Deployment Center to ease businesses transitioning to this model.
For the uninitiated, here"s how Microsoft describes the Zero Trust security model:
Instead of assuming everything behind the corporate firewall is safe, the Zero Trust model assumes breach and verifies each request as though it originates from an open network. Regardless of where the request originates or what resource it accesses, Zero Trust teaches us to “never trust, always verify.” Every access request is fully authenticated, authorized, and encrypted before granting access. Microsegmentation and least privileged access principles are applied to minimize lateral movement. Rich intelligence and analytics are utilized to detect and respond to anomalies in real time.
Microsoft states that while businesses have been working hard to utilize this model, one thing that they still encounter difficulties is in the area of additional deployment support. To tackle this problem, the firm has announced the Zero Trust Deployment Center.
Simply put, this is a set of documentation that dives into details about how to implement principles of Zero Trust, setting up infrastructure, network, data, and environment-readiness, among many other things. Microsoft says that it has ensured this repository of information contains guidance about Zero Trust deployment in plain-level objectives and action items to ease the environment setup. For organizations already implementing Zero Trust security models, this repository will be useful in determining their progress.
Those interested in setting up their Zero Trust environment can visit the Deployment Center here while organizations who have already implemented it to some extent can test its maturity using Microsoft"s tool here.