Advancing Zero Trust Maturity Throughout the
Visibility and Analytics Pillar
Executive summary
In the ever-expanding landscape of cybersecurity, threats manifest in various forms and
often infiltrate systems discreetly. The constant risk of intrusion underscores the critical
importance of swift detection and mitigation.
This cybersecurity information sheet (CSI) centers on the visibility and analytics aspect
of the Zero Trust (ZT) model, emphasizing the significance of comprehensively
observing data characteristics and events within an enterprise-wide environment.
Prioritizing cyber-related data analysis aids in informing policy decisions, facilitating
response actions, and constructing a risk profile to proactively fortify security measures.
Visibility and analytics form the cornerstone of any ZT strategy, empowering
organizations to harness infrastructure, tools, data, and techniques for proactively
mitigating risks and for rapid identification, detection, and response to emerging cyber
threats. Evolving from traditional signature-based approaches, detection (visibility and
analytics) and response capabilities are increasingly adopting behavior-based
methodologies to combat the sophistication of modern cyber threats. This pillar
highlights the benefits of continuous monitoring and provides insights essential for
identifying and mitigating potential security risks to assure that only authorized users
and devices access sensitive resources.
This CSI offers recommendations for advancing visibility and analytics within the ZT
framework. It explains how these capabilities seamlessly integrate into a comprehensive
ZT framework as detailed in the NSA publication, Embracing a Zero Trust Security
Model. [1] National Security System (NSS), Department of Defense (DoD), and Defense
Industrial Base (DIB) stakeholders can leverage this guidance in conjunction with
complementary resources to enhance visibility and analytics through the implementation
of outlined capabilities.
