Why Zero Trust architecture is superior to traditional security models

Today’s threat landscape is marked by increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Ransomware incidents grew by 18% in 2024, while the Dark Angels cybercrime group walked away from a single attack with a payout of $75 million. Ransomware-as-a-service is growing in popularity and zero-day attacks continue to be unleashed at a rapid pace. There is a clear rise in phishing, and the malicious use of artificial intelligence (AI) is bypassing traditional security measures. All of this sets a hazardous stage for any organization trying to keep itself safe.

Business decision-makers and IT leaders are now well aware of the effects of these risks. From disrupted operations and regulatory non-compliance to legal fees and customer churn, the impact of falling prey to any cyberattack is significant. Security teams are under immense pressure to adopt strategies and systems that stave off evolving risks. The successful ones choose zero trust architecture rather than the network-centric, perimeter-based security models that are unequipped to face the threats of the digital era.

Traditional security models: What’s the risk?

With a perimeter-based architecture, security, and connectivity revolve around a trusted network that is extended to users, devices, sites, clouds, and applications. This network extension is done in order to provide users and other entities with access to the IT r sources connected to that network. Naturally, this produces a sprawling flat network that is vulnerable to cyberattacks. So, to protect it, organizations deploy appliances like firewalls and virtual private networks (VPNs) in an attempt to establish a security perimeter that keeps bad things out and good things in.

This network-centric architecture was designed for a simpler, on-premises-only, bygone era. It is not well suited to our digital world with its work-from-anywhere users and its countless cloud applications hosted off-premises. In fact, when organizations cling to this old-school architecture while embracing remote work and the cloud, it creates significant problems. And even when tools like firewalls and VPNs are deployed as virtual appliances in the cloud, the underlying methodology and its fundamental flaws remain the same. By nature, perimeter-based architectures:

• Expand your attack surface: Endlessly extending your network to users, apps, devices, clouds, and locations, and using tools with public IP addresses, like firewalls, results in a ballooning network with countless entry points ripe for exploitation.
• Failure to prevent compromise: Perimeter-based security solutions like firewall appliances struggle to inspect encrypted web traffic at scale, perform cursory traffic scanning rather
  than full inspection, and ultimately enable threats to pass through defenses.
• Enable lateral threat movement: Once malicious entities have made it past your defenses and accessed your network, they can move laterally throughout it and access
  the resources connected to it, expanding the reach of their breaches.
• Are unable to stop data loss: As mentioned above, network-centric tools struggle to inspect encrypted traffic; additionally, they are not designed to secure data leakage
  paths like SaaS apps, endpoints, private apps, and more. As such, they are often unable to stop data loss.

In addition to these four major weaknesses, network-centric models have other challenges. First, they increase IT complexity through stacks of networking and security appliances, which, regardless of whether they are deployed as hardware or virtual appliances, contribute to convoluted IT infrastructure. Next, managing a complex fleet of point products and appliances requires a significant amount of time from administrators. This, when combined with the technologies’ purchase prices and the expensive private connections needed for traditional networking, leads to significant costs. Finally, when traffic has to be backhauled to a distant data center or virtual appliance for security and connectivity, the added latency harms user experience and, as a result, impedes productivity.

Zero trust architecture: Why it’s the modern security standard

Zero trust represents a stark departure from the perimeter-based model and is a fundamentally distinct architecture. It successfully decouples security and connectivity from your network through a cloud native platform that acts as an intelligent switchboard and delivers secure any-to-any connectivity as a service at the edge—without extending network access to anyone or anything. As such, zero trust avoids the excessive permissions and implicit trust of traditional models that connect entities to the network. Granular, least-privileged access directly to IT resources is enforced through context-based policies that assess risk and respond accordingly. It’s a more intelligent approach to security that lacks the manifold weaknesses of firewalls and VPNs.

Zero trust architecture enables you to:

• Minimize your attack surface: Direct-to-app connectivity circumvents the need for endless network extension, while firewalls and their public IPs are eliminated. Instead of inbound connections, zero trust uses inside-out connections (a connector sitting in front of the app reaches out to the zero trust cloud, which then stitches the connection together). All of this shrinks your attack surface and, as a result, the potential for a breach to ever begin.
• Prevent compromise: Zero trust is delivered through a proxy-based architecture that performs full traffic inspection in order to stop attacks in real time. With a cloud native platform that boasts a high degree of performance, it can even inspect encrypted traffic at scale; this is critical because more than 95% of web traffic today is encrypted, and more threats are hiding within said traffic than ever before.
• Eliminate lateral threat movement: As mentioned previously, zero trust provides least-privileged access through direct-to-app connectivity. When no entities are
  connected to your corporate network as a whole, no one (and no thing) can move laterally within it, access its various connected resources, or expand the blast radius of a cyber breach.
• Stop data loss: When zero trust is delivered through a high-performance, cloud native platform, you can fully inspect all of your traffic, including encrypted traffic at scale, and prevent data loss therein. Additionally, comprehensively securing any-to-any connectivity while ensuring granular, least-privileged access to data means that a zero trust platform can secure sensitive information and any possible leakage path.

Beyond these four core benefits of zero trust, the architecture provides additional advantages that eliminate other issues inherent to perimeter-based architectures. First, zero trust secures any-to-any connectivity with a breadth of functionality, circumvents the need to backhaul traffic and extend network access, and, as a cloud-delivered service, minimizes the need for appliance maintenance and change implementation. In other words, it drastically reduces complexity. Next, this reduction in complexity leads to lower costs through fewer technology purchases, decreased private bandwidth requirements, and lower management overhead. Finally, edge-delivered, direct-to-app connectivity means no traffic backhauling and no added latency, giving users the best possible experience and maximizing productivity.

A zero trust approach cannot be replicated with traditional tools, like firewalls and VPNs, which intrinsically entail the presence of a network-centric, perimeter-based architecture. Any security model that operates by securing your network perimeter will not be able to adhere to zero trust principles or morph into a zero trust architecture—it’s like fitting a square peg into a round hole. And even if network segmentation can help alleviate some lateral threat movement, the other weaknesses of the traditional model remain. Zero trust requires a shift in mindset and a reframing of your approach to security. With the right technology partner, you can implement zero trust architecture, capture its many benefits, and gain secure, any-to-any connectivity that will position your organization to adapt to whatever the future may bring.

Zscaler: The original pioneer and continued innovator in zero trust

Only the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ platform offers true, cloud native zero trust. Zscaler is the industry leader in zero trust and the continuous driver of innovation in the space. We are committed to moving this critical technology forward—as we always have been.

There’s a reason 40% of Fortune 500 companies are Zscaler customers. Time and again, the Zero Trust Exchange™ has proven its ability to transform security and connectivity for the cloud-first, hybrid-work organization. With over 160 full-compute points of presence (PoPs) processing over 500 billion transactions daily (that’s more than 50x the number of daily Google searches), our platform boasts unprecedented scale. Every day, the Zero Trust Exchange™ prevents over 9 billion incidents and policy violations and stops 150 million cyber threats.

We have nearly 15 years of experience operating the world’s largest inline security cloud, and we are proud to share that our customers experience results such as:

• A 70% reduction in infrastructure costs
• 35x fewer infected machines
• An 80% faster user experience

As the original pioneer and continued innovator in zero trust, we are forever focused on refining our ability to minimize the attack surface, prevent compromise, eliminate lateral threat movement, and protect data. Zscaler customers consistently see these results while simultaneously decreasing complexity, reducing costs, and improving user experiences and productivity. This demonstrates our commitment to our mission of securing, simplifying, and transforming businesses.

Real-world case study: How Guaranteed Rate blocked 2.5 million threats in three months

Guaranteed Rate is the second-largest retail mortgage provider in the US. The company knew that its perimeter-based security architecture was making it more vulnerable to cyber risks—not
less. Its infrastructure consisted of three on-premises data centers packed with a myriad of appliances like legacy VPNs and firewalls. As the company embraced hybrid work and three different cloud platforms, it realized that it could not adequately protect its users or data with status-quo security.

With the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ platform, Guaranteed Rate took a phased journey to zero trust implementation and slowly retired its legacy point products. It started with securing the web and SaaS moved on to securing private applications and then began optimizing employees’ digital experiences (and more). Ultimately, the deployment resulted in:

• A minimized attack surface due to the removal of firewalls, public IPs, and inbound connections in favor of inside-out connections
• A reduced risk of compromise and data loss via inline TLS/SSL traffic monitoring and AI-powered advanced threat protection
• The elimination of lateral movement through direct-to-app connectivity as well as Zscaler Deception technology, which lures attackers with decoys

Overall, the company blocked 2.5 million cyberthreats in three months. It now inspects 97% of its encrypted web traffic, and its users access apps three times more quickly.

Guaranteed Rate and countless others are already reaping the many benefits of this modern architecture. You, too, can join them and confidently walk the well-traveled path toward a complete zero trust implementation.

Where to go from here

For help comparing security offerings and determining if they truly provide zero trust architecture, download this checklist for a quick reference guide.

If you’d like to receive a more entry-level introduction to zero trust, join part one of our webinar series, “Zero Trust, from Theory to Practice.” It’s designed to help people of all experience levels navigate the entirety of their zero trust journeys.