As organizations embrace hybrid and remote workforces, the volume of cyberattacks and data breaches involving unauthorized access to networks, applications, and systems has surged. In response, cybersecurity leaders are striving to adopt a zero trust approach to security to reduce the risk of data breaches, ransomware, and insider threats.

However, the success of these efforts is being undermined by a variety of factors. The rapid increase in identity-related breaches means that organizations now need to implement a comprehensive authorization framework.

This framework must make it possible to authenticate users and devices on an ongoing basis and continuously monitor users post-authentication. Only 50 percent said authorization features in their zero-trust program, an omission that could expose their infrastructure to threat actors.

The survey found that only a third (31 percent) of organizations had sufficient visibility and control over authorization policies intended to enforce appropriate data access, with a further 45 percent citing that the lack of technical resources was proving a challenge when it comes to gaining true visibility and control of their network or optimizing enterprise authorization and access controls. Moreover, 41 percent of organizations also say they are using unmanaged and ungoverned OPA-based solutions to authorize identities.

Indications are that while many organizations may well be implementing a form of zero trust, they often lack the complete toolset or capabilities required to extend zero trust from authentication through to the final access point and target data set. Today’s increasingly complex operational realities mean that, in addition to network access, zero trust also needs to be applied to application access and access to intra-application assets.

Protecting hybrid working environments relies on achieving genuine zero trust protection, which depends on gaining visibility of all resources, applications, and networks. Relying on authentication alone is no longer enough.

Organizations must also implement authorization that follows every digital interaction that happens post-authentication, granting or revoking user permissions to resources in real-time. Unfortunately, authorization can prove a broad and complex challenge for organizations unless they utilize a comprehensive authorization solution.

Providing a more technically advanced approach to zero trust, dynamic authorization drives essential processes: runtime authorization enforcement and high levels of granularity. By implementing dynamic authorization, organizations can replace hundreds or thousands of policies with a single pane of glass, making it easy for security professionals to manage and deploy policies and enable fine-grained access control.

While zero trust boosts higher levels of confidence, it must be paired with a comprehensive authorization framework. Enterprises today need continuous evaluation and validation across all tech stack interaction to mitigate data breach impacts.

Providing a comprehensive risk-based authorization and identity-aware security framework enables organizations to address zero trust security gaps and elevate their overall security posture.