What is the Business Value of Zero Trust?

Written by the CSA Zero Trust Working Group.

Zero Trust requires an ongoing investment of time, resources, and budget, but in return results in security, technical, and business benefits. This blog will take a look at the many ways Zero Trust delivers business value.

Cost Reduction and Optimization

Why It Matters to the Business

Businesses are always looking to reduce the total cost of ownership for security and more efficiently allocate resources across business units.

How Zero Trust Helps

Zero Trust reduces the need for legacy security systems, reduces the risk of security breaches which lowers recovery costs, and provides automation and a simplified security architecture, which improves productivity.

Operational Resilience

Why It Matters to the Business

Operational resilience is the ability to maintain critical operations despite disruptions. Business operations depend on IT systems, so IT fragility or unreliability can severely disrupt a company.

How Zero Trust Helps

In a Zero Trust architecture, systems and devices are isolated by default. Only authenticated and authorized identities can communicate. Segmentation hinders attackers' ability to perform reconnaissance or move laterally.

Business Agility

Why It Matters to the Business

A swift response to market shifts and opportunities is highly valuable and can significantly boost a business's success.

How Zero Trust Helps

Zero Trust enhances security and productivity with simplified, real-time policy updates. Improved prevention and the reduction of the overhead required to maintain security allows the business to focus on business opportunities.

Facilitating Compliance

Why It Matters to the Business

Compliance requirements may be imposed on the business by government or industry regulators, or may be willingly adopted by the business in order to improve its standing.

How Zero Trust Helps

Zero Trust systems can reduce the cost and effort of enforcing controls and of reporting on compliance requirements. They also ensure the organization is continuously compliant.

IT Risk Reduction

Why It Matters to the Business

Managing IT risks is vital for organizations to mitigate the impact of security incidents that can affect business operations, brand value, and stock price.

How Zero Trust Helps

Zero Trust supports the ideas of risk-based identity and access controls, adaptive segmentation, continuous monitoring, and proactive security measures. This promotes a strong security posture and safeguards against threats.

Secure Adoption of New Technology

Why It Matters to the Business

Secure adoption of new technology is key to staying competitive in a changing landscape and growing revenue.

How Zero Trust Helps

Due to its flexibility, a well constructed Zero Trust architecture should be able to integrate new technologies without a major re-architecture and associated cost.

Accelerating Business Unit Integration

Why It Matters to the Business

The integration of acquired company systems is often expensive and slow due to the need to normalize, re-architect, and change IP addressing schemes. This adds costs and time, reducing the value of M&A activity.

How Zero Trust Helps

Zero Trust avoids expensive and slow network integration and IP address remapping. It also allows you to add modern authentication to older systems, overlaying a stronger security layer on acquired systems.

Improved Visibility and Analytics

Why It Matters to the Business

Improving data collection and turning data into information and knowledge allows the business to make informed security decisions related to risks and the success or failure of those decisions.

How Zero Trust Helps

Collecting and reporting enhanced identity and context data offers visibility into risk areas and the impact of specific changes on the entire environment. This visibility aids in identifying resource requirements and affected processes.

Improving User Experience

Why It Matters to the Business

User productivity is core to business efficiency, profitability, and competitiveness. Eliminating frustrations and barriers is also a good employee retention strategy.

How Zero Trust Helps

Zero Trust can eliminate siloed and outdated access systems, enable the secure adoption of newer technologies, reduce network latency, and help avoid security-related downtime.

Better Meet Prospective Customer Security Requirements

Why It Matters to the Business

Many organizations must meet customer requirements to conduct business with them. Enterprises are more frequently imposing stricter cybersecurity requirements on suppliers, partners, and vendors.

How Zero Trust Helps

Adopting Zero Trust allows organizations to substantially improve their security and more easily demonstrate that they have done so. This allows the business to quickly and reliably obtain new customers and retain existing ones.

Learn more about how Zero Trust delivers business value in Communicating the Business Value of Zero Trust.

Develop and demonstrate an in-depth understanding of Zero Trust with CSA’s Certificate of Competence in Zero Trust (CCZT).