Zero-trust market has matured over 2022

Security has remained a constant area of focus for the channel and concern for customers this year, and one of the buzz phrases that has emerged from this has been zero trust.

As the curtain comes down on 2022, it’s clear that both channel partners and customers have embraced the concept and the levels of activity around tools and solutions in that category have increased over the course of the past 12 months.

“We’ve seen a huge uptick in a number of key areas of both an understanding of what zero trust really means and, more importantly, how that translates into the problems it solves for businesses,” said Scott Walker. senior director, channel and alliances EMEA at Illumio.

“It’s starting to get to a point where it’s defined and reasonably well understood...a big part of our overall channel strategy has been to contribute and grow our business, but also to educate and help both customers and partners understand where zero-trust segmentation fits into the overall zero-trust strategy and zero-trust space,” he added.

That maturity among partners and customers is a positive because it not only gets the technology into more hands but improves the chances of keeping the criminals at bay.

“It’s really positive because it supports our goal, which is to make it a safer place to be within a business and support businesses in mitigating risk associated with ransomware and evolving threats, and zero trust is the only proven way to help support that,” said Walker.

A wider appreciation of zero trust has also translated into more channel activity and a greater number of partners looking to work with vendors operating in that market.

“With channel partners specifically ]many] are accelerating the requirement to build a zero trust practice or build a set of technologies or an architecture. So when their customers come to them and say, ‘We need a zero-trust-based approach’, they have a set of technologies, a set of principles, almost like a package, that they can offer to that customer that helps them across a security roadmap,” said Walker.

Earlier this year, Illumio carried out research to gauge the user interest in zero trust and found that an overwhelming number (89%) had implemented or were in the process of implementing zero trust in their organisation.

Most users that were quizzed (90%) indicated that zero trust was one of their businesses top three security priorities. Even with budgets under strain because of economic headwinds, many were locking in money to make sure they could continue to invest in security.