How The Platform Approach to Zero Trust Helps Organizations Strengthen Security, Reduce Complexity

Recent Industry Analyst Report Highlights How Advances Are Being Applied to Enterprise Use Cases

Organizations are being impacted by a wide spectrum of challenges. The economy is uncertain, employees remain highly distributed, and geopolitics are volatile. Adding to the problems at hand are increasing attacks, growing complexity, and new technologies such as ChatGPT that security and compliance professionals are trying to sort through. All these factors and more have turned the modern digital landscape into a minefield of threats and regulatory headaches.

Zero Trust Continues Gaining Ground

To deal with the myriad obstacles, organizations are turning to frameworks that now have a history of measurable ROI and proven outcomes. Among several emerging as preferred by security-conscience enterprises is Zero Trust. Identified in 2010 by Forrester analyst Jon Kindervaag, Zero Trust is an approach that calls for limiting access to computing environments to better reduce overall risk to systems and data.  

What’s New in Zero Trust 

As Zero Trust continues along its maturity path, we are starting to see it more heavily influence both innovation and strategy. To help global security and risk professionals make smarter decisions about how to use Zero Trust to defend their organizations against cyberattacks and deal with growing complexity, Forrester recently published The Zero Trust Platforms Landscape, Q2 2023.

In addition to defining this new Zero Trust category, the report also identifies the core use cases addressed, benefits delivered, and the dynamics and vendors driving the market. In the report, Forrester Senior Analyst Carlos Rivera writes:

You can use Zero Trust platforms to unite disparate security tools, apply effective security controls across hybrid business and operational models, and align essential functionalities to industry frameworks. But to realize these benefits, you’ll first need to select from a diverse set of vendors that vary by size, type of offering, geography, and use case differentiation. Security and risk professionals should use this report to understand the value they can expect from a Zero Trust platform vendor, learn how vendors differ, and investigate options based on size and market focus.

Finding Zero Trust Business Value

With the security and risk market expected to grow to more than $260 billion over the next several years (according to some estimates), there is no doubt that most organizations realize they must invest in the latest products and services to remain ahead of cybercriminals. However, they are also starting to understand that they need to make purchases that translate into value for the businesses they are paid to protect. This recent report also helps readers understand the difference between Zero Trust Platforms and disparate point solutions that may or may not integrate to deliver maximum ROI. According to the report:

Zero Trust platforms are more than just a vendor catalog of bolt-on tooling. They combine key Zero Trust functionalities natively or via integrations to provide centralized management of vendors’ solutions and/or centralized reporting from third-party solutions. This allows security and risk (S&R) pros to focus on outcome-driven use cases, instead of integrating a heterogenous set of nonintegrated technologies, to speed their Zero Trust transformation.

Absolute Software and Resilient Zero Trust

As Absolute defines it, Resilience helps to ensure that your key security applications – including those integral to a Zero Trust security approach – remain functional, tamper resistant, and run at maximum performance levels. Our unique platform approach supports the enhanced segmentation and asset visibility capabilities required to enable ZTNA and continuous device posture assessment for today’s distributed, work-from-anywhere environments. To put it simply, Resilient Zero Trust capabilities are always on, easy to manage, and don’t cause friction for employees trying to get their work done.

As validation for us of a key role we play in the Zero Trust ecosystem, Forrester recognized Absolute as a notable vendor in the report. With the ability to establish and maintain resilient Zero Trust for every user that needs to access sensitive data and applications to stay productive, our customers are not only maximizing security and compliance but also delivering the best possible user experience.

To learn more about Zero Trust platforms and how they can be applied for positive security and risk impact in your environment, as well as how Absolute can help, download The Zero Trust Platforms Landscape, Q2 2023.