Businesses want zero trust capability despite lack of confidence deploying it

To combat growing cyber risks, 72 percent of businesses plan to implement zero trust technology this year, yet 47 percent of security professionals lack confidence in their ability to apply it.

A new report from Cybersecurity Insiders and Pulse Secure, based on a survey of more than 400 cyber security decision makers, finds a striking confidence divide among cybersecurity professionals in applying zero trust principles.

"The sheer volume of cyberattacks and enormity of data breaches in 2019 has challenged the veracity of secure access defenses, even in well-funded organizations," says Scott Gordon, chief marketing officer at Pulse Secure. "Zero trust holds the promise of vastly enhanced usability, data protection and governance. However, there is a healthy degree of confusion among cyber security professionals about where and how to implement zero trust controls in hybrid IT environment -- which is clearly reflected in respondents’ split confidence levels."

Over 40 percent of respondents worry that vulnerable mobile and at-risk devices, insecure partner access, cyberattacks, over privileged employees, and shadow IT risks are top challenges to secure access to applications and resources.

45 percent are concerned with public cloud application access security and 43 percent of respondents expressed Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) enablement issues, more than 70 percent of organizations are looking to advance their identity and access management capabilities.

A quarter of organizations are looking to augment their current secure access infrastructure, and nearly a third of cybersecurity professionals are interested in applying zero trust to address hybrid IT security issues.

"Some organizations are hesitant to implement zero trust as SaaS because they might have legacy applications that will either delay, or prevent, cloud deployment. Others might have greater data protection obligations, where they are averse to having controls and other sensitive information leaving their premises, or they have a material investment in their data center infrastructure that meets their needs," says Holger Schulze, founder and CEO of Cybersecurity Insiders.

You can get the full 2020 Zero Trust Progress Report from the Pulse Secure site.

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