{"id":48033,"date":"2017-11-01T05:00:36","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/?p=48033"},"modified":"2017-10-31T14:21:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T21:21:58","slug":"trust-is-a-vulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/trust-is-a-vulnerability\/","title":{"rendered":"Trust Is a Vulnerability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, a friend of mine posted a picture on LinkedIn of a T-shirt he had made, featuring the quote <em>\u201cTrust is a vulnerability.\u201d<\/em> This post went somewhat viral, which made it clear to me that people are really understanding the essence of Zero Trust.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\"  class=\"size-full wp-image-48036 alignleft lozad\"  data-src=\"https:\/\/www.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Trust-isVulnerability.png\" alt=\"Trust isVulnerability\" width=\"200\" \/>Early on when I first started looking at the fundamental problems in network security, I realized that trust was the thing people were taking advantage of and exploiting. Trust is no different from a vulnerability in Apache Struts. It\u2019s something we must address in our organizations and digital systems as much as any software vulnerability. And if we\u2019ve learned anything from recent data breaches, it\u2019s that vulnerabilities are what are exploited, and all vulnerabilities must be mitigated.<\/p>\n<p>So why do we have this problem with trust in the first place? It\u2019s because we have anthropomorphized the network with the idea that it\u2019s a person who is on the network, when in fact it is not. People are not on the network, packets are. Packets are essentially just big bundles of photons or electrons that move across some kind of cable. Why would we ever provide extra privilege to a set of electrical impulses based upon the physical location to which they have just moved?<\/p>\n<p>All data breaches are, ultimately, breaches of trust. That\u2019s why names like Snowden and Manning should give every cybersecurity professional the shivers \u2013 because both of those data breaches were exactly that: breaches of trust. Each attacker exploited their status as a trusted user to access data they didn\u2019t actually need to do their job. Because we have confused the trustworthiness of human beings with the trustworthiness of packets, we have created this problem ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>However, I\u2019m not saying that people aren\u2019t trustworthy. I\u2019m saying that people are not packets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thought bubble with John Kindervag: why trust is a vulnerability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":48066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[4779],"coauthors":[4243],"class_list":["post-48033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity-2","tag-thought-bubble-with-john-kindervag"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/thought-bubble-blog-feature-img-650x3001.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48033"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48096,"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48033\/revisions\/48096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48033"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.paloaltonetworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=48033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}