83% of ANZ businesses adopting Zero Trust

More than eight in 10 businesses in Australia and New Zealand are moving towards Zero Trust cybersecurity strategies, but are facing barriers to greater adoption, according to research commissioned by Datacom.

A survey of IT decision-makers across the two markets conducted by Forrester Consulting found that 58% of respondents are well on their way to implementing Zero Trust, while just 17% were yet to begin the journey.

But among 46% of organisations interested in adopting the strategy, internal teams are hamstrung by a lack of time or expertise to effectively make use of Zero Trust.

Meanwhile, although 83% of decision-makers see Zero Trust as the future of their organisation’s security, only 52% of security teams and 40% of operational business or technology teams were seen as supporters at the outset of Zero Trust implementations.

Datacom CIO and CISO Karl Wright said this disparity likely demonstrates that communication as part of a company’s Zero Trust strategy is being vastly underestimated.

“Stakeholders are not buying into Zero Trust because they are not getting the information they need. Implementing a Zero Trust approach is not as simple as adopting a new piece of technology, and organisations really need to consider adopting a change management approach,” he said.

“For the IT and security teams that are going to roll this out, they need to know a Zero Trust approach will give them more visibility into their organisation’s security status and make it easier to protect their business from breaches.”

Likewise, employees need to trust that Zero Trust is not going to lock them out of using the apps and data they need to do their jobs effectively, Wright added.

“Having the right Zero Trust architecture and protocols in place provides simplified, secure access to technology and information for employees, and supports remote and hybrid working models.”

The survey found that 69% of all survey respondents said they were adopting Zero Trust on a piecemeal basis, with the biggest early moves being seen in areas including analytics and automation (78%), device (78%) and network security (70%).

Image credit: iStock.com/Olivier Le Moal