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Think of your Zero Trust journey as your game plan to combat cybersecurity. Regardless of where your organisation is at today within this journey, uniFLOW Online can be adapted to whatever works best for your network environment.
Today's organisations are considering a security model that adapts more effectively to the complexities of the modern environment, embraces the hybrid workplace and protects people, devices, apps and data wherever they are located. The concept of Zero Trust Networking is the assumption that no user, device or service can be trusted. Unfounded trust is to be avoided in order to minimize IT risks for organizations. The lowest possible authorisations and access are granted only when necessary.
However, Zero Trust principles are not set in stone so it is not surprising that there are different views on the definition and implementation of the guidelines.
It is easy to see how a Zero Trust model is downgraded with exceptions being made to the network, to incorporate printing, by allowing PCs to talk to each other and all devices to talk to the printers. And this is where uniFLOW Online can help.
Zero Trust is not a product or software. Zero Trust is a security principle for organizations to adhere to so that information security is guaranteed. Since there is no universal definition of Zero Trust, organizations can interpret the term as they see fit. This leads to a wide variety of benchmarks because not all organizations give the same priority to data security. Following market and industry leaders, such as Microsoft and Google™, on their Zero Trust journey empowers organizations to build their own guidelines.
Previously the Microsoft cloud services, such as the Microsoft Azure cloud, were already one of the safest places to store data online. Now, with Zero Trust becoming the cutting-edge data security principle, Microsoft has defined its own guidelines:
Always authenticate and authorise based on all available data points, including user identity, location, data classification and more.
Limit user access with Just-In-Time and Just-Enough-Access (JIT/JEA), risk-based adaptive policies, and data protection.
Minimise blast radius and segment access. Verify end-to-end encryption and use analytics to get visibility, drive threat detection, and improve defenses.
uniFLOW Online provides many implementation options which allow the customer to decide which one works for their network regardless of where they are on the Zero Trust journey.
DOWNLOAD BROCHUREIn the traditional office, PCs and printers are typically all on the same network or split into different virtual networks (VLANs) with a print server bridging the gap. However, in a Zero Trust model, as part of the 'assume breach' principle, the 'blast radius' of a potential breach is reduced by isolating each network endpoint as much as possible from all other network points. This can also mean that internet access is only available from the internal network, i.e., no other communication routes are allowed. Should one PC become infected or compromised, it cannot spread because it cannot 'talk' to anyone else.
With a full Zero Trust micro-segmented network, companies are not only securing their business-critical data, but they are also able to remove their local on-premise infrastructure to free capital bound in server hardware, maintenance, and IT services.
All users connect to uniFLOW Online using their existing login credentials such as Azure AD, Google Workspace™ or OKTA. This includes full support for multi-factor authentication and other policies defined by the IT department.
Multiple levels of privileged access are available so different users can only access the parts of uniFLOW Online applicable to their role e.g. maintenance staff have no insight into user data, neither do budget managers have access to the rest of the system.
All communications and the print path can be made via the internet. No lateral connections between PCs and printers are required on the internal network. All communication and print traffic is encrypted.
Since the launch of uniFLOW Online, security has been one of the focal points during the development process. Users use personal secured print queues, allowing them to print from any location using any device, and their encrypted print jobs are stored in the local Microsoft Azure data centre from where they are released when needed.
Canon devices connected to uniFLOW Online, such as the Canon imageRUNNER Advanced DX, Canon imageCLASS are the perfect match for the implementation of industry-leading Zero Trust principles. The only thing the printer needs is a power supply and an internet connection.
LEARN MOREZero trust is a framework that assumes a complex network’s security is always at risk to external and internal threats. It helps to organise and strategise a thorough approach to counter those threats.
Today’s cloud environments can be attractive targets for cybercriminals aiming to steal, destroy, or ransom business-critical and sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property (IP), and financial information.
While no security strategy is perfect and data breaches will never be totally eliminated, zero trust is among today's most effective strategies. Zero trust reduces the attack surface and mitigates the impact and severity of cyberattacks, reducing the time and cost of responding to and cleaning up after a breach.
Not to mention, a zero trust security model is the most effective means of cloud security there is. The ability to not trust any connection without proper verification is essential given the amount of cloud, endpoint, and data sprawl in today’s IT environments. Plus, the increase in visibility will make life much easier for IT and security from the administrator level all the way up to the CISO.
Assume the network is always hostile: Basic practice before zero trust has been to assume that if you were accessing a known network, you could be relatively certain it was secure. With zero trust, you assume it is not secure.
Accept that external and internal threats are always on the network: Traditional security methods assumed networks were secure until a threat was detected. Zero trust turns this model on its head.
Know that the location of a corporate network or cloud provider locality is not enough to decide to trust in a network: Traditional security rules based on IP address are no longer reliable.
Authenticate and authorise every device, user and network flow: A zero trust model authorises and authenticates user access by least-privilege access on a per-session basis.
Implement policies that are dynamic and calculated from as many data sources as possible: End-to-end data analytics should be established, providing monitoring and threat detection across the entire architecture, including cloud environments, which support both IT and security operations requirements.
As sophisticated endpoints on the network that process sensitive data of all kinds, printers and Multi-Function Devices (MFD’s) should be treated in a similar way to all IT endpoints, with robust access control, management, and intrusion detection to ensure they are not compromised.
Zero trust-related features used in the print environment include identity access management and use cloud print platforms that conform to zero trust. Organisations are also looking for built-in hardware security features (run-time intrusion detection, BIOS protection, self-healing firmware, in-memory breach identification, whitelisting, etc.).
