Bringing zero trust to the browser

Maintaining strong and reliable cybersecurity for your business has never been more challenging. Not only are security professionals dealing with the ever-changing threat landscape, where malicious actors are constantly cooking up new attack vectors – but they're also facing new vulnerabilities opened up by the post-COVID shift to hybrid working.

The explosion of flexible, agile and remote working – powered by the growth of cloud-based applications and accelerated by COVID – has placed many employees outside the carefully controlled and monitored on-premises security environment. This has fundamentally changed the way workers use devices and engage with critical business systems. While this has had many benefits for employees and employers, it means that IT and security professionals now have to protect a hugely expanded attack surface, taking in endpoints scattered across their region, country or even the world.

As ever, cyber criminals were quick to take advantage of these new vulnerabilities. High profile ransomware attacks were well documented in the early days of the pandemic, and incidents remain alarmingly common (the Allianz Risk Barometer survey found that, in 2023, 81% of companies across the world reported that they had been affected by ransomware in the past 12 months). Security professionals have been in a race to mitigate these vulnerabilities, adopting new tools and techniques better suited to the hybrid model.

Statistics show that a high proportion of the reported breaches in recent years directly involve not only external bad actors, but also end users within the targeted business. Whether through theft, user error or social engineering (such as phishing and other deceptive tactics), credentials acquired by criminals through human error allow them to operate undetected and unchallenged in order to steal sensitive data for ransom or sale to other criminals. Hybrid working has only increased the dangers of this happening, as remote access to business systems is often essential for those working remotely.

As a response to these growing dangers, zero trust has become a powerful tool in the cyber security arsenal. A zero trust approach allows organisations to tightly control access to sensitive data, continually monitoring and verifying who is accessing systems. That access can also be switched on and off or enabled on a limited-time basis to allow users and endpoints entry only when it is needed.

With access kept tightly under wraps, the value of stolen credentials to cyber criminals is greatly reduced. They can no longer lurk unnoticed within your network, as those credentials are closely monitored and easily disabled, rendering them useless.

With the browser being the main portal through which employees now access business tools, networks and critical business and customer data, Surf believes that the same zero trust approach should be applied. With a zero trust browser solution, the risks of human error can be greatly reduced without impacting your employees’ productivity.

The browser is and will remain the key access point for many users, and thus a logical target for attack by cyber criminals. Ensuring it is as secure as you can possibly make it is simply common sense – and we can help.

To learn more about the new threat landscape, the zero trust approach and why it should be applied to your browser, download our white paper Zero trust, zero fear.