The majority of organizations are exploring zero trust solutions to harden their cybersecurity defenses, but most are struggling to operationalize zero trust into its existing architecture, according to a new report from market research firm Forrester.
The study, commissioned by zero trust and edge cloud security company iboss, found although 75% or organizations are currently developing or implementing a zero trust strategy, 63% of them are struggling to integrate it into their current security architecture.
Most respondents agree that establishing zero trust is critical to their success, with organizations citing improving customer experience, the rising number of cyberattacks and data breaches, cloud migrations, hybrid workforce, compliance and government regulations as their top zero trust initiatives.
Despite those initiatives and the clear benefits of zero trust to an organization’s security, most organizations are struggling to implement zero trust, with nearly 60% citing the difficulty working across cloud and on-premises environments as the top reason.
Other top issues holding up zero trust implementations include a lack of security skills and resources, difficulty with authenticating hybrid employees, a lack of data classification and prioritization, lack of budget and difficulty working with legacy technology and environment.
According to the study, the financial repercussions can cause irreparable damage to a business, but it can also lead to employee retention issues.
When asked about the ramifications of not adopting zero trust principles, organizations cited an increase in data breaches (66%) and cyberattacks (61%) as the top ramifications. Others include additional investments to resolve issues (60%), financial penalties due to failed compliance (57%), damaged brand reputation (50%) and lower employee satisfaction (46%).
To solve security issues, organizations are taking a wide range of approaches, and with 34% saying they have already deployed zero trust or secure access service edge (SASE) technology, and 41% say they plan to do so over the next 12 months. Other approaches include deploying a VPN, cloud access security broker, secure web gateway or secure service edge.
According to iboss CEO Paul Martini, the biggest challenge facing IT decisionmakers is the increasing number of data breaches and hacks.
“Modern security should be focused on protecting an organization’s data and resources, regardless of where an employee is accessing that information from,” Martini says. “That’s the reason why the U.S. government has turned to Zero Trust security for federal agencies and that’s why forward-thinking organizations are increasingly implementing it as well.”
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