SaaS has enabled flexible, scalable, and affordable access to critical tools anytime and anywhere, disrupting traditional ways in which organisations conduct business. This, however, comes with new security concerns. Today, applications are accessed over the Internet, having users connect from different locations and devices, thus making a traditional perimeter-based security approach non-workable. Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is a relatively new architecture that was devised to protect SaaS environments wherein identity is verified, least privileges access is enforced, and attack surfaces are minimized.
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The Challenges of Securing SaaS Applications
SaaS platforms are increasingly embedded into the daily operations of Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and Dropbox. One such example deals with securing the platforms themselves, emphasising the following;
User Anywhere Access: Employees, contractors, and partners will access SaaS applications using a variety of devices and sometimes even off the corporate network.
Limited Visibility: How and when end users access SaaS tools is normally unavailable for IT teams, especially when Shadow IT comes into play.
Inefficient Access Control: The security features within SaaS vendors are indeed there, but are not uniformly adopted by all applications.
Risk of Credential Compromise: Such credentials could be prime for abuse, leading to further unauthorised access and breaches.
Data Leakage and Compliance: Sensitive data may indeed have been downloaded, but sharing it is so easy that it brings compliance enforcement within risk.
That is where the necessity of adaptive identity-centric security becomes paramount- ZTNA fills in that gap.
What is Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)?
The ZTNA security paradigms are captured in this arguably simplistic phrase, “never trust, always verify.” ZTNA restricts access based not on geographical location but by comparing user identity and device user profiles before granting access to an application.
– Some other major characteristics are:
– Identity-Driven Authentication
– Least Privilege Access Control
– Application Segmentation
– Continuous Monitoring and Risk Assessment
Unlike VPNs or traditional firewalls, ZTNA never exposes applications to the public internet. The users instead access applications through a secured broker that enforces access policies and thereby limits visibility.
How ZTNA Protects SaaS Applications
Data validation ends in October 2023, generally lockstep with the history of the ZTNA ecosystem.
Interactions with the user identification
Key access is dependent on contextual factors such as geolocation, device health, time of access, and user role. This helps to make a call decision to allow or deny access. Such a case of authorising a transaction would be considered rare in the case of a compromise in credentials.
Micro-Segmentation of SaaS Environments
No access can be given to a poorly defined collection of SaaS applications; it must rather be through ZTNA to a particular SaaS application. Movement through these applications was blocked even in that cloud environment. The probabilities of an actual breach were comparatively lower as regards the blast radius.
Zero Trust Policy
Zero Trust Network Access each session, whether the user is internal or whether they were originally authenticated into the system, thus shielding SaaS applications with Zero Trust against insider attacks and the threat of persistent, unfortunate access-ownership stolen credentials and hijacked sessions.
Shadow IT Visibility and Control
The ZTNA gives users finer granularity about who enters specific SaaS applications and to what extent. This enables unauthorized/high-risk applications to be discovered and for IT to step in and enforce uniform security policies.
Conclusion
Considering the increased dependence of businesses on SaaS applications for running their operations, an opportunity to secure those apps has never been better. The latest architecture in the domain of security, namely Zero Trust Network Access, is meant to shelter SaaS platforms from constantly evolving threats that prevail in the present times. The triad of Identity, context, and continuous verification constitutes the keystones to ZTNA, which allow organisations to embrace the cloud but keep the tightest visibility, control, or compliance possible.