The Cyber Defense eMagazine March Edition for 2024

Is Zero Trust Enough?
Why Zero Access Is a Better Way to Protect Your Backup Infrastructure
By Greg Tevis, Vice President of Strategy, Cobalt Iron
Backup has always been seen as the last line of defense in data security. After all, if your backups are
safe, then you can recover from most forms of attack. That’s why as much as 93% percent of ransomware
attacks these days may be going after backup data — to thwart that last line of defense. If attackers can
get to the backup data, then they have the upper hand.
Right now, the zero-trust approach to data and resource security is all the rage. Every large backup
vendor touts it. It’s almost a knee-jerk reaction to invoke zero trust as the way to prevent these attacks.
To understand why that is, it helps to first understand the logic behind zero trust.
Traditionally, each user of a computer resource (e.g., data, network, system, or database resource) would
have a login, and if that login is verified once, then that user would be privileged to move around and
conduct tasks anywhere inside the domain of that resource. For example, with access to Active Directory,
they could change who and what gets access to your network assets. With access into Exchange, they
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