New EMA Zero Trust Report: The Role of Network Teams

The new 2024 EMA Zero Trust Report examines how network and security teams collaborate on Zero Trust architectures. It emphasizes DNS’s role in network segmentation, policy enforcement, observability, and threat detection, providing utmost Zero Trust reward for limited investment.

The new 2024 EMA Zero Trust Report explores how network and security teams collaborate to implement Zero Trust strategies. This report emphasizes that network teams are vital partners in Zero Trust initiatives. By owning the DNS infrastructure, they can further contribute to Zero Trust Networking by leveraging DNS for network segmentation, policy enforcement, observability, and threat detection. With limited investment, DNS can be an interesting, high-reward value-add to a Zero Trust strategy. Let’s take a closer look.

Introducing the new EMA Zero Trust Report 

Zero Trust is more than a security buzzword; it’s a fundamental shift in the way organizations protect their assets. At its core, Zero Trust assumes that no user, device, or application can be trusted by default. Instead, every access requires verification, regardless of its origin. 

This model has become critical in today’s enterprise world, where threats are more sophisticated, networks are more complex, and IT environments are increasingly distributed. The rise of hybrid work models and multicloud architectures further underscores the need for strong security practices, making Zero Trust an essential framework for modern cybersecurity and networks.

Naturally, a cybersecurity group typically spearheads Zero Trust security inside an organization, but network technology brings foundational components of a Zero Trust implementation. The new EMA Zero Trust report examines how network infrastructure teams support enterprise Zero Trust security initiatives, making them increasingly important enablers. 

Zero Trust Strategic Considerations

Crafting a Zero Trust strategy demands careful attention to foundational priority pillars, such as involving network teams and focusing on:

• Eliminating unauthorized access: Ensuring that only authenticated and authorized users gain access to critical resources
• Maintaining performance and user experience: Strengthening security without degrading network performance is critical
• Architectural flexibility: Catering to evolving needs, such as hybrid multicloud infrastructures, ensures Zero Trust strategy success
• Preventing lateral movement of threats: Becoming more prominent in hybrid multicloud architectures

According to the EMA Zero Trust Report, 63% of IT professionals emphasize eliminating unauthorized access, while 60% highlight the importance of maintaining network performance during Zero Trust implementations. Additionally, management simplicity (48.5%) and architectural adaptability (44.8%) play pivotal roles in executing a Zero Trust strategy. These priorities are even more pronounced for organizations leveraging hybrid and multicloud environments. 

In particular, network performance emerges as a critical factor, with 97% of respondents acknowledging its importance when implementing Zero Trust. Among them, 60% consider it “very important,” further underscoring the need for seamless integration between security protocols and operational efficiency.

The Role of Network Teams

As revealed in the EMA survey, network teams are vital to the success of Zero Trust strategies, contributing at every stage – from strategy definition to implementation and ongoing operations. They work in tandem with cybersecurity teams, sharing equal leadership roles in 44% of organizations, particularly those with hybrid cloud environments.

The responsibilities of network teams extend to implementing observability tools, which are critical at supporting Zero Trust strategies. Network monitoring helps provide real-time visibility into what’s going on and can be used at various stages of a Zero Trust strategy. For example, analyzing DNS queries and identifying source and destination IPs helps in two ways: understanding the flow of legitimate DNS traffic across networks, which is helpful when planning Zero Trust policies, and accelerating the detection of DNS threats and infected devices, which is critical when operating a Zero Trust network. Health telemetry also informs of potential capacity, operational, or performance issues, while user behavior insights are used for policy enforcement and threat detection. 

Observability tools are particularly essential in hybrid multicloud architectures, where the complexity of IT environments demands enhanced visibility. The EMA report highlights that 96% of respondents consider observability tools crucial for Zero Trust success. Benefits include:

• Threat detection and response (39%)
• Policy enforcement (27%)
• Performance management (26%)
• Anomaly detection and alerting (24%)

But, despite its promise, implementing Zero Trust comes with challenges that undermine a network team’s ability to support Zero Trust, according to the EMA Zero Trust report. Network teams face hurdles such as budget constraints (38.5%), skill shortages (34%), and communication issues with security groups (33%). On the technical side, they struggle with infrastructure integration (40%), lack of network visibility (33.7%), and compliance with regulatory requirements (33%).

How DNS Contributes to Zero Trust

Network teams also oversee DNS infrastructure, which plays a critical role in securing communications, segmenting networks, and reducing attack surfaces. Their contributions to Zero Trust cannot be overstated, particularly as organizations adopt more dynamic IT ecosystems.

According to the EMA survey, most organizations incorporate DNS into their Zero Trust frameworks, leveraging its capabilities for:

• Policy enforcement through DNS filtering and domain blocking (56%)
• Enhanced device authentication (55%)
• Reducing the attack surface with DNS security solutions (54.8%)
• DNS-based network segmentation for granular security (53%)
• Traffic visibility and inspection for applications and resources (50%)

By filtering DNS or blocking domains, IT teams can enforce policies that control access to applications for explicitly authorized clients. Using additional data beyond domain names and IP addresses, such as the extended DNS client subnet or MAC address, makes DNS filtering more powerful and enables IT teams to design fine-grained user-based security policies. 

Implementing a comprehensive DNS security solution also helps reduce the attack surface for better threat prevention. In addition, DNS-based network segmentation allows the network to be divided into different zones and helps establish rules for zone communication. This enables application zoning, allowing organizations to further enforce granular access controls and limit communication between devices, applications, or workloads, reducing the risk of lateral movement by attackers within the network. 

Finally, respondents reported that real-time DNS traffic inspection and DNS monitoring accelerate the detection of threats such as data exfiltration and Domain Generation Algorithms (DGAs), and optimize network segmentation. These capabilities are even more valuable in hybrid and multi-cloud architectures.

Zero Trust Benefits & Outcomes

By implementing a Zero Trust framework, organizations can realize a wide range of benefits that go beyond enhanced security. Organizations report improved resilience and reliability (52%), better alignment between IT and business objectives (48.5%), and enhanced performance and user experience (48%). Flexibility (45%) and operational efficiency (44%) are also notable outcomes.

Network automation plays a key role in maximizing these benefits. By streamlining workflows and automating tools used to implement and manage a Zero Trust architecture, including network segmentation and policy enforcement, SecOps and NetOps teams can achieve the dual goals of security and efficiency. As more organizations adopt hybrid multicloud infrastructures, the importance of automation and adaptive controls will continue to grow.

Conclusion

The 2024 EMA Zero Trust Report highlights the important role of network teams in executing effective Zero Trust strategies. DNS can make a significant contribution to successful Zero Trust Networking, particularly in the areas of network segmentation, highly granular policy design and enforcement, and DNS monitoring and observability. By leveraging DNS in their Zero Trust Networking, IT teams can enhance access control to critical applications and infrastructure, reduce the attack surface, prevent lateral movement of DNS threats, and improve near real-time detection of threats and data exfiltration. All this for a limited investment.