CIO OPINION
This person will be the Zero Trust czar for the enterprise and will be the individual responsible for driving a company on its Zero Trust journey . Their job will be to bring together siloed organisations and vendors and ensure that all teams and departments are aligned and working toward the same goal .
If resistance is encountered , the Zero Trust czar should have the backing of senior leadership ( CIO , CISO , CEO , Board of Directors ) to make decisions quickly and cut across organisational boundaries to keep the process moving ahead . Whether the very bold title of Chief Zero Trust Officer becomes reality or not , an empowered individual with a clear mandate and a singular focus may just be the key to getting Zero Trust across the finish line in 2023 .
2023 sees the death of ‘ the password ’
Phishing attacks continue to be a significant problem for companies around the world . Even with regular security awareness training , users will eventually click a wrong link and fall victim to an attack . And unfortunately , most cyberattacks begin with a phishing email .
Cloudflare itself was attacked this year by a sophisticated , targeted SMS-based phishing attack . A total of 76 Cloudflare employees received the phishing link in text messages on their phones . Three employees fell for the attack and clicked the link and entered their credentials . But unphishable , multi-factor authentication in the form of FIDO2-compliant security keys in conjunction with Zero Trust access prevented the attacker from breaching our systems . Other companies that used less secure Time-Based One- Time Passwords ( TOTP ) weren ’ t as lucky and many were breached by the same attackers .
Username and password authentication even when combined with common forms of multifactor authentication is just not enough anymore . Enterprises can enable stronger FIDO2-compliant security keys along with Zero Trust access today if they ’ re using a system like Cloudflare ’ s to make it much tougher on attackers .
But the best way to protect most users and their credentials may be to remove the burden on the end-user altogether . The FIDO alliance envisions passwordless sign-in everywhere . Logins will use your face or fingerprint instead of the old usernamepassword combo . A FIDO sign-in credential , sometimes called a ‘ passkey ’, will make it easier on users and harder on the attackers . If there ’ s no password to steal , hackers won ’ t be able to harvest credentials to carry out their attacks . We predict many websites and applications will adopt passwordless login using the FIDO Alliance passkey standard beginning in 2023 .
We believe the majority of cloud services will soon come with compliance features built in .
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