Getting the basics right to ensure a successful zero trust strategy Credit: Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock How do you ensure that your remote access is secure? Do you consider your servers protected as long as you have in place a virtual private network (VPN), virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), Azure Virtual Desktop, desktop-as-a-service (DaaS), VDI-as-a-service (VDIaaS), or other forms of secure jump hosts? There is a misconception that having a secured intermediary is adequate to shield your servers from threats. Unfortunately, this alone does not guarantee secure remote access – what’s missing is a clean source. Remote access Trojans can seize control of your endpoint beyond keylogging and screen scraping. When I was a supporting judge for the 2004 BlackOPS: HackAttack challenge in Singapore, I watched in real time as a team took control of an opponent’s machine. But more recently, the city state faced the proliferation of a more worrying threat: banking trojans – in the form of Android malware – causing customers to lose their savings, amounting to millions of dollars. This truly highlights a very real risk of not having a clean source. If an organisation exposes its privileged access to remote users; VPNs, multifactor authentication, secure jump hosts, sudos, network intrusion prevention and detection systems, and web application firewalls are all inadequate without a clean source. The clean source principle requires all security dependencies to be as trustworthy as the object being secured. This starts with ensuring that the endpoint is secured to specifications including the version of the operating system, security baseline configuration, and other requirements. In many solutions, this is often referred to as host validation or host checks. If you are using Microsoft, this can be achieved by implementing Conditional Access. So, the next time someone tells you that DaaS or VDIaaS is adequate for your administrator to protect his access to an important system, communicate the risks and highlight the importance of applying the clean source principle in a zero trust strategy. Related content news TeamViewer targeted by APT29 hackers, containment measures in place TeamViewer says the attack targeted its corporate network, not customer data or product functionality. By Gyana Swain 28 Jun 2024 3 mins Cyberattacks Remote Access Security how-to Download the SASE and SSE enterprise buyer’s guide From the editors of our sister publication Network World, this enterprise buyer’s guide helps network and security IT staff understand what SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) and SSE (Secure Service Edge) can do for their organizations and how t By Neal Weinberg 13 May 2024 1 min Remote Access Security Network Security Enterprise Buyer’s Guides news analysis Attackers could abuse Google's SSO integration with Windows for lateral movement Compromised Windows systems can enable attackers to gain access to Google Workspace and Google Cloud by stealing access tokens and plaintext passwords. By Lucian Constantin 30 Nov 2023 8 mins Multi-factor Authentication Single Sign-on Remote Access Security PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe