Thanks to IBM Power10 Security, “Zero Trust” is Building Confidence

Article in partnership with IBM.

Almost daily, our global news cycle runs stories about cyber-attacks on our systems. Whether it’s stealing data or seeking ransom, these reprehensible acts make us feel, at best, insecure, and perhaps even hostage to hackers. Of course, they also carry a significant cost to the companies that must reclaim their data, restore public trust, and pay the penalty for violating privacy and protection laws. This is compounded when the data is considered ‘sensitive’ and isn’t de-identified, as in the case of financial or health data.

No question, there is a highly sophisticated and lucrative market for hackers — one that’s propped up on well-established business models, strategic operations, and extensive technological and human resources.

We, executives and entrepreneurs, to mitigate consequences, train employees to recognize the scale of the problem so that they can identify early warning signs, just as we invest heavily in technological resources to monitor, prevent, and block nefarious users. Globally, large techno players are innovating systems to make them less vulnerable to attack. For instance, the Zero Trust Security Model requires all users — whether they fall within or outside an organization’s network — to be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated before they can access applications and data. Essentially, Zero Trust assumes that there is no network edge: networks can be local, in the Cloud, or a combination thereof, with resources anywhere as well as workers in any location.

Granted, it may seem absurd to ask our colleagues to confirm their identities, but the alternative makes it easy to assume the identity of a known network device and steal data. Obviously, the model must be implemented in such a way that it doesn’t create bottlenecks for IT services. For this, we need the businesses and organizations who produce the systems to collaborate. Only then can systems be designed in such a way that they meet the needs of safety and performance.

This is exactly what I learned through IBM’s in-depth webinar on their new Power10 processor (link to the on-demand webinar), a solid and reliable security ecosystem that “protects your data from core to cloud”. As my regular followers know, I’ve already written about IBM’s Zero Trust governance model, but I’ll take this opportunity to summarize their vision — which is based on four…