The Business Case for Zero Trust: Beyond Cybersecurity Buzzwords
Everybody in cybersecurity is talking about zero trust these days, but what’s it all about, and most importantly, does your business need it?
For the first question – zero trust is a security strategy that continuously verifies users, so that in the event of a breach, attackers are detected and quarantined as soon as possible. Privileges are never granted without verifying first, stopping bad actors in their tracks and minimizing risk.
As to the second question, it depends. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what problems you can expect to solve when you implement zero trust.
The Costs of Insufficient Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity risks are a bigger challenge than ever. The pandemic forced most companies to make their networks accessible from anywhere, anytime, and on any device. Meanwhile, AI tools have empowered hackers to launch more sophisticated and frequent attacks, exposing and capitalizing on any access they can get.
These days, every business is a target, no matter what size. A cyberattack happens every 39 seconds, and in 2025 alone, cybercrime is projected to cost the world $10.6 trillion dollars, with a “tr”. That would be the world’s third biggest economy, behind only the U.S. and China.
Given that there’s probably someone trying to steal your business’ data literally right now as you’re reading this, can you afford to risk insufficient security?
On average, a breach will cost you more than $4 million. Not to mention, it can take all your systems down for days or weeks and cause irreparable damage to your reputation. Yikes!
If you’re starting to panic, take a deep breath. Zero trust is a highly effective way to mitigate these security risks, saving you millions each year while keeping your business online and reputation safe.
Traditional Security Frameworks No Longer Work
The problem isn’t that today’s risks are so much greater – it’s that legacy security models are horribly equipped to face them.
Traditionally, companies operated with perimeter-based security like firewalls, where users could access virtually everything so long as they could remember their password.
This is called implicit trust – once a user is verified, they’re assumed to be trusted and receive privileges without further verification. If you can cross the moat, then you can move freely about the castle.
But what if a hacker or phisher managed to steal someone’s credentials and got into the network? Or worse, what if a trusted and verified employee went rogue?
With just a login, they’d be able to move around the network without limits, stealing all of the valuable data and holding it for ransom. The results would be catastrophic – the entire system would be compromised.
How the Pandemic Changed Cybersecurity
It’s certainly convenient to login with just a username and password, and to be fair, network access wasn’t as nuanced when we were all sitting on company computers around the office.
Even though many businesses have returned to the office after the pandemic, cloud and hybrid environments still dominate the operating environment, with complex access requirements.
Add rapid-fire AI attacks to the mix, and even small mistakes can have dire consequences. Breach risks are massively amplified when resources can be accessed in just a step or two.
The old ways were due for an update. Zero trust offers a solution that’s a much better fit.
How Zero Trust Meets Today’s Business Needs
With the possibility of cyberattacks coming from all angles – including internally – at all times, it pays off to be prepared for the worst.
Let’s recall the three core pillars of zero trust to see how they resolve the issues left by traditional networks.
Always assume a breach
Zero trust frameworks are built from the assumption that a breach can occur at any moment – and frankly, that’s not far from the reality of today’s cybersecurity landscape, thanks to AI.
Think of your network like a house. Traditional security models worked by preventing unwanted break-ins with things like security cameras, a fence, or a guard dog. But if an intruder was already inside the house, those measures wouldn’t matter.
Zero trust prepares by asking: If you knew a break in was going to happen, how could you prevent major damage? You’d probably put locks on all the doors, all the drawers, and anything valuable, so that even if a bad actor was inside, they would be limited to a much smaller area.
While traditional networks didn’t have any good way of dealing with internal threats, zero trust stops them in their tracks. At the same time, zero trust contains and quarantines any breaches, limiting damage.
If putting locks on everything sounds extreme, remember that users can and do still get access when they need it – they just have to confirm their identity and intent first.
Always authenticate and continuously verify
Unlike traditional security systems, zero trust verifies users continuously, every step they take.
Verification can happen in a few ways:
- Credentials like username and password, backed up by multifactor authentication.
- Device posture, for example if a device hasn’t installed the latest security updates, then access may be denied.
- Location, for example if the user is attempting to access from a different location or IP address than usual.
- Time, if the user doesn’t usually log in at this time.
- Device, for example if they don’t usually use this device.
- Real-time monitoring, keeping a close eye out for trouble.
- Policy compliance, to make sure the user is in line with access policies.
All these factors combined determine whether or not access is granted, not just any individual one. Policies are set to determine what behavior is acceptable or not, and most importantly, these policies are continuously enforced. To their credit, AI and machine learning have made this even easier and more accurate, assessing the risks of any given user accessing the network from any given place and time.
In the house example, continuous verification means that you can control who has the keys to each lock with great precision, and you can take the keys back at any time if they are misused. This protects you not only against hackers, but against internal threats too.
Always provide the least possible privileges necessary
In the traditional model, anyone who gained access to the network had extensive privileges. That’s not the case with zero trust.
An effective zero trust strategy means granting privileges just in time (“JIT”) and with just enough access (“JEA”).
For example, suppose a manager is going away for a week. Their responsibilities will be shifted to their assistant manager while they’re gone.
JIT means that the assistant could receive the full manager’s access at exactly the time the manager leaves, and that access can be revoked as soon as the manager returns, when it’s no longer needed.
JEA means that users never get more access than needed to perform any given, explicit task. Compare that with “just in case” access, where a user gets access to resources for a few follow up tasks that might be possible in the near future, just in case. It may be convenient, but it opens a vulnerability, which zero trust closes.
With zero trust, users only receive privileges for their explicit task at hand. Any follow up tasks would require them to verify again and receive more explicit privileges.
How Much Does Zero Trust Cost?
To figure out if implementing zero trust is worth it for you, there’s another important question: how much does it cost?
There’s no cookie-cutter answer here. Zero trust is not a product or a tool that you can simply buy – rather, it’s a strategy for setting your systems and networks up. The cost varies to the extent that you want to implement it.
Nonetheless, given that zero trust could save millions of dollars in breach damages and potentially hundreds of hours of sleep (priceless), most cybersecurity leaders would agree that it’s worth the investment.
Stop Trusting, Start Verifying
Zero trust is the ideal way to provide contextual access, whenever and wherever it’s needed, without compromising security. That’s exactly why countless companies have shifted beyond traditional perimeter-based security to zero trust-enabled frameworks in the past few years.
But before you jump in and start building zero trust into your business, it’s essential that you have a good understanding of all the problems in your security posture first. That way, you’ll adopt the right solutions.
We encourage you to get in touch with our team at R3 IT for a free security audit. We’ll find any and all the problems you need to address, and we’ll advise you on the best next steps, zero trust or otherwise.
