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Stupid question: I thought google was well known for its zero trust security model, is it completely unrelated? I read the article, but it doesn't mention beyon

Stupid question: I thought google was well known for its zero trust security model, is it completely unrelated? I read the article, but it doesn't mention beyondcorp at all. And if it applies at all, what threats are not well covered by zero trust security that would require this? I think I misunderstood a concept (or two lol), since I thought an employee's device was basically "untrusted" by default in google's case. And there wasn't really a lot to gain by simply targeting an employee's device ?

kccqzy 3y ago
I have a feeling* that this is another case where Google's internal politics and promo culture rears its ugly head. I don't think the team behind this effort talks to the team responsible for BeyondCorp. Or maybe they do, but the person who came up with this idea wants a promotion so much that they decide to ignore BeyondCorp with some half-heartedly written doc. *: Just a feeling. I have no proof. Just speculating. Take it with a huge grain of salt.
advisedwang 3y ago
Beyondcorp is not used for access to non Google sites (and even if it was, it could be a WAF but not much more). As for how beyondcorp protects if a employee workstation does get owned: the zero trust means simply being within a network permimeter does not grant access... But employee workstations are trusted to do whatever that employee is authorized to do. So beyondcorp massively reduces what an attacker can do and adds lots of hurdles (e.g. requiring pressing a security key, pervasive monitoring), but doesn't render a hacked employee workstation harmless
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Ahhh that makes a lot of sense!! Thank you! I guess it is inevitable that an attacker could have access to something, no matter how constrained and limited it is, as long as they can get an employee to authenticate even if it is for a single action. It still sounds miles better than the traditional IT hell that is trying to constrain the devices as much as possible instead of securing the network and implementing auth internally.
UncleMeat 3y ago
Security is an onion. It has layers. You can be motivated to prevent people from running "curl | sh" because a phishing email told them to even if internal systems run their own authentication and authorization.

kccqzy 3y ago

I have a feeling* that this is another case where Google's internal politics and promo culture rears its ugly head. I don't think the team behind this effort talks to the team responsible for BeyondCorp. Or maybe they do, but the person who came up with this idea wants a promotion so much that they decide to ignore BeyondCorp with some half-heartedly written doc. *: Just a feeling. I have no proof. Just speculating. Take it with a huge grain of salt.

advisedwang 3y ago

Beyondcorp is not used for access to non Google sites (and even if it was, it could be a WAF but not much more). As for how beyondcorp protects if a employee workstation does get owned: the zero trust means simply being within a network permimeter does not grant access... But employee workstations are trusted to do whatever that employee is authorized to do. So beyondcorp massively reduces what an attacker can do and adds lots of hurdles (e.g. requiring pressing a security key, pervasive monitoring), but doesn't render a hacked employee workstation harmless

mardifoufs 3y ago
Ahhh that makes a lot of sense!! Thank you! I guess it is inevitable that an attacker could have access to something, no matter how constrained and limited it is, as long as they can get an employee to authenticate even if it is for a single action. It still sounds miles better than the traditional IT hell that is trying to constrain the devices as much as possible instead of securing the network and implementing auth internally.

UncleMeat 3y ago

Security is an onion. It has layers. You can be motivated to prevent people from running "curl | sh" because a phishing email told them to even if internal systems run their own authentication and authorization.