We’ve already talked a lot about the benefits of zero trust for securing your organization, but if you’re a small or medium-sized business looking at how to implement zero trust, it can be easy to get overwhelmed.

Your managed service provider (MSP) can be a great resource for implementing zero trust, and all things security, too. And while zero trust can greatly improve your security posture, it’s not the only thing you should be doing.

Implementing zero trust requires technical expertise and dedicated IT staff, and you’ll increase your odds of success if your break down your implementation in smaller, more manageable tasks. Different security vendors offer different frameworks, but regardless of the cybersecurity tools you deploy, implementing zero trust can be broken down into four elements:

• A system for tracking everyone on your network, their location and what applications and data they are accessing
• Selecting security tools, including next-generation firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and identity access management
• Comprehensive guidelines that outline who can access your network and resources, when and from where
• Network monitoring capabilities that track and log all traffic, both external and internal, that can establish a baseline to make it easy to spot suspicious activity and remediate it

A zero-trust model will greatly reduce your overall risk by limiting the impact and severity of a cyberattack. Even if you fall prey to an attack, implementing zero trust will reduce the cost to your business, including penalties related to regulatory compliance. Zero trust also increases visibility for your IT staff because it enables them to see who is on the network and granularly segment access – even employees are strictly managed to only access resources that are related to their responsibilities. In addition, what they are allowed to access requires multifactor authentication.

Implementing zero trust shouldn’t be your only strategy for securing your organization, but it has a high success rate of mitigating the damage caused by threat actors, especially social engineering attacks. A managed service provider can help you get started with the four key elements of zero trust as well as determine what other tools and polices can improve your security posture.