For years, organizations have taken a defensive “castle-and-moat” approach to cybersecurity, seeking to secure the perimeters of their networks to block out any malicious actors. Individuals with the right credentials were assumed to be trustworthy and allowed access to a network’s systems and data without having to reauthorize themselves at each access attempt.

However, organizations today increasingly store data in the cloud and allow employees to connect to the network remotely, both of which create vulnerabilities to this traditional approach. A more secure future may require a “zero-trust architecture,” in which users must prove their authenticity each time they access a network application or data.

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