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There will always be a way in a network. The question is can we eliminate the network? Now that computers in a LAN/WAN barely 'talk' to each other, and the ap
by gz5 5y ago
There will always be a way in a network. The question is can we eliminate the network?
Now that computers in a LAN/WAN barely 'talk' to each other, and the apps are rarely on the same network as the users' computers, is there enough value in networking the computers relative to the risk of creating a valuable target for attackers?
Consider for example what the business case for attackers would look like if their target was an island of one.
Of course networks have benefits such as simpler ways for IT or MSPs to manage devices and updates, shared auth structures, directories and policies, etc. If we look at all those benefits, and consider the alternatives, are they worth the risk of a network in today's topologies with today's threat vectors?
- lmm 5y agoI've been saying for about 10 years now: make your network public, and use actual authentication on things that need access control. Visitors using your wifi? No problem, since your wifi is just another part of the internet as far as your threat model is concerned.
- teddyh 5y agoYes! I concur wholeheartedly, and I regret that I have but one upvote to give. To contribute something, here is RFC 3724, "The Rise of the Middle and the Future of End-to-End: Reflections on the Evolution of the Internet Architecture": https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3724.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3724.html
- djrogers 5y agoThat’s really the whole idea behind BeyondCorp (Google’s model) and numerous other Software Defined Perimeter and Identity Aware Proxy architectures. There is actually a pretty big shift in corporate networks going on right now, originally driven by IaaS and SaaS adoption (if your applications and data don’t live in your own data center, what is your ‘private network’ doing for you?). This change has been massively accelerated by WFH/COVID in the past 18 months.