Report: Zero-trust architecture is expected to increase cybersecurity efficacy by 144%

As 2022 quickly approaches, Symmetry Systems and Osterman Research have released a report detailing how organizations plan to deploy zero-trust architecture, with 53% of respondents citing high-profile ransomware attacks as their primary motivator.

Incorporating zero-trust principles into modern data security ensures no one point of failure when systems are breached. Zero-trust principles can ensure that even if attackers know the database location/IP, username, and password, they cannot use that information to access privileged information given to specific application roles, identity and access management (IAM), and cloud-network perimeters.

Today, we live in a hybrid-cloud environment where users, developers, supply-chain vendors, and contractors get data via a web of static infrastructure and cloud applications. Legacy control solutions for this data rely on internal developers’ IAM rules and authorization policies for customer-facing web services.

According to the report, a zero-trust architecture is expected to increase cybersecurity protections’ efficacy to stop data breaches by 144%. The report also credits an emphasis on securing customer data as another motivator behind enterprise-wide deployment.

Other key highlights from respondents include barriers encountered when deploying a zero-trust architecture, their confidence level in existing cybersecurity protections, the top ten data sources in need of protection, and the total IT budget allocated for zero-trust initiatives by year.

This report references data from an in-depth survey of 125 IT and security decision-makers in midsize and large organizations, all of whom are knowledgeable about how their organization was using or planning to use a zero-trust architecture, or why their organization had intentionally chosen not to do so.

Read the full report by Symmetry Systems and Osterman Research.