How Zero Trust Mitigates Zero-Day Attacks
Zero-day attacks can be mitigated with zero trust (least privilege access) best practices
Zero-day attacks, fueled by their stealthy nature and unknown vulnerabilities, pose a significant threat to organizations, worldwide and across all sectors. Attacks like WannCry, Stuxnet, Peta/NotPeta, and the Equifax Breach made major news publications headlines and are a part of the public consciousness. These sophisticated cyber threats can bypass traditional security defenses, making them difficult to detect and mitigate. However, implementing a zero trust security model is an effective approach to combat zero-day attacks.
We will investigate how zero trust mitigates zero-day attacks by redefining the security perimeter, adopting a proactive defense strategy, enforcing strict access controls, leveraging continuous monitoring, and integrating advanced threat intelligence. Here’s how organizations can fortify their security posture by adopting zero trust principles and effectively safeguarding against the ever-evolving – and ever-current – attacks by nation-state bad actors, hacktivists, and financial opportunists.
Zero-Day Back on the Radar
Recent weeks have seen a worrying wave of cyberattacks c/o MOVEit, a widely used file transfer application from Progress, which has again raised the ever-worrying issue of zero-day attacks. Bad actors have exploited its vulnerabilities, successfully deployed ransomware, and stolen data via vulnerable MOVEit deployments worldwide.
This situation isn’t just about the scale of the issue; it’s also about the complexity and sophistication of these threats. This new type of cyberattack involves remote code execution, a step beyond the typical “man in the middle” or “dependency tampering” tactics that have been all too common in the past. This is a calculated, tactical intrusion that marks a shift in the cybercriminal playbook of Russian-backed Clop, also known as Lace Tempest, TA505, and FIN11, who have claimed responsibility for this (and many other zero-day exploits) in order to deploy ransomware.
Progress has been quick to address the vulnerabilities in MOVEit, offering patches to mitigate the identified threats, but…
