Instead of believing everything behind the corporate firewall is safe, the Zero Trust model assumes breach and verifies each request as though it originates from an uncontrolled network.

Regardless of where the request originates or what resource it accesses, Zero Trust teaches us to “never trust, always verify.”

In a Zero Trust model, every access in request in Microsoft 365 is strongly authenticated, authorized within policy constraints and inspected for anomalies before granting access. Everything from the user’s identity to the application’s hosting environment is used to prevent breach. We apply micro-segmentation and least privileged access principles to minimize lateral movement. Finally, rich intelligence and analytics helps us identify what happened, what was compromised, and how to prevent it from happening again.

Thankfully, Zero Trust implementation is not only possible, if you are using Microsoft 365, it’s relatively painless to get started.

Stages of Zero Trust Implementation:

• User Access and Productivity

• Apps and Data

• Security Operations

• Operational Technology

• Data Center Security

Guiding principles of Zero Trust:

1. Verify explicitly. Always authenticate and authorize based on all available data points.

2. Use least privileged access. Limit user access with Just-In-Time and Just-Enough Access (JIT/JEA), risk-based adaptive polices, and data protection to protect both data and productivity.

3. Assume breach. Minimize blast radius for breaches and prevent lateral movement by segmenting access by network, user, devices, and application awareness.

Whether on-premise, hybrid or fully cloud-enabled, this assessment ensures organisations maximise their efficiency while minimising risk, usually delivering significant time and cost savings in return - the ideal means to ensure you're getting the most out of your Microsoft EMS and Azure investment.