Verizon’s zero trust network effectively blocks connectivity to servers and applications from unknown devices, making corporate data virtually invisible to anyone without approved access.
“For the past decade, enterprises have connected their employees and third parties directly to their internal networks via virtual private networks (VPN),” said Vickie Lonker (pictured), Verizon’s vice president of product management and development. “Once they are through the firewall, they then have access to a multitude of critical data. With Zero Trust Architecture embedded in the network, all users are isolated from the corporate network but are still able to directly access their authorized applications. It’s all about protecting corporate data, but also enabling people to do their job.”
SDP isolates an enterprise’s servers from vulnerabilities and configuration errors and integrates multifactor authentication, using a One-Time Password (OTP) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) for multi-factor authentication. The service can be switched on by deploying the correct SDP clients and setting up authorised user lists for the applications that need to be accessed.
The expanded capabilities have been driven by the growing number of remote workers accessing sensitive information such as regulated data, intellectual property and corporate financial data, all connecting via traditional private network (VPN) technology, that has led to the adoption of SDP. According to Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, 29% of the 2000 data breaches studied involved stolen credentials with misconfiguration errors in the cloud increasing year-on-year showing limitations of relying only on perimeter security controls to protect corporate data.
The service is now on offer to the company’s global Private IP and Ethernet customers who currently run over 330,000 connections covering 800,000 network route miles in more than 150 countries.
