Banyan Security is ecstatic to introduce phase 2 of our Granular Trust Scoring (GTS) feature set. Phase 2 includes the ability to create a Trust Profile. Trust Profiles allow an admin to assign trust factors to different groups of devices, with available assignment criteria of; user groups, serial numbers, operating systems, MDM management, and device ownership.
The F.A.C.T.S.
The term ‘trust’ is a cemented industry concept within IT organizations used to describe the backbone of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA). Afterall, security and networking teams have been devising methods to trust devices for years.
With ZTA, trust isn’t so straightforward. You cannot simply place computers into a secured network and call it a day as it violates the fundamentals of ZTA. Instead, ZTA warrants the need for organizations to collect signals from devices, users, applications, etc. to determine the trust of the devices registered to the organization.
As a result, Banyan introduced Trust Scoring to alleviate ambiguity of ‘trust’ as organizations adopt ZTA throughout their own ecosystem. As we spoke with adopters of our trust scoring process, we realized some F.A.C.T.S about trust:
Flexibility
Analysis of Trust Factors must be flexible. Organizations can’t globally adhere to Trust Factors as IT organizations manage a multitude of versions of devices and employee types (vendors, contactors, etc.) that require unique rulesets.
Applicability
Trust factors must be useful in determining the trust of a device. For example, it’s useful to know which factors apply only to mobile devices (e.g., Not Jailbroken) and which only apply to desktop devices (e.g., Firewall).
Clarity
Assessing Trust of devices and services requiring trust must be crystal clear in order for organizations to feel confident in their deployment of Trust Scoring.
Transparency
Understanding the Trust Scoring calculation is imperative to admins and allowing configurability provides complete transparency.
Supportability
The capability to understand what factors are not compliant on an end user’s device and what specific steps are needed to satisfy/remediate them is paramount to adopting Trust Scoring.
Introducing Trust Profiles (GTS)
Historically, Banyan struggled to provide the flexibility required for customers to fully consume our device trust scoring feature set. That has since changed with the release of Trust Profiles. Trust Profiles allow admins to assign different devices to trust factors. The assignment can be based on the following (all additive):
After creating the assignment, admins can then add which Trust Factors will be evaluated to the devices assigned to the Trust Profile. All existing Trust Factors will remain, including the ability to set the Trust Effect. Once completed the admin can set the priority of the Trust Profile.
How Trust Profiles help with the F.A.C.T.S.
Anyone working on bringing something to the masses knows that there seems to be endless edge cases and that each customer seems to be a unique snowflake when it comes to technology. Trust profiles have the flexibility required to deliver Banyan’s leading Trust Scoring feature across an organization by providing extensive assignment criterion. All while delivering clarity as to which devices are assigned to the Trust Factors deemed important by the organization. Furthermore, Trust Profiles layers on top of the existing Trust Effect feature we released last month enabling transparency across a device fleet by having the admin control the effect of each trust factor within a Trust Profile. Lastly, by layering Trust Effect within Trust Profiles, it expands the applicability of Trust Scoring throughout a customer’s organization without compromising the supportability needed to adopt the new security control.
Experience the Banyan Security Difference
Traditionally, customers have only ever dreamed of enabling some sort of mechanism to evaluate the security posture of their device fleet. With Trust Profiles, the blockers preventing this dream from being realized are moot, and we encourage everyone to give it a try. No additional software is needed, simply enroll a device and create a Trust Profile.
Try it out for yourself, and sign up for Banyan’s free Team Edition.
Additional Information
Banyan Security maintains a rich repository of product documentation, including information regarding today’s subject matter including a Trust Score Overview and further details about Trust Effect and Trust Profile.
