Secure Data Movement Identified as Zero‑Trust Bottleneck, New Research Highlights Risks for Enterprises
What Happened – A recent “Cyber360: Defending the Digital Battlespace” study of 500 security professionals reveals that organizations consistently underestimate the difficulty of securing data in motion, causing Zero‑Trust programs to stall. The research quantifies the gap between assumed and actual protection levels for data transfers across networks and cloud services.
Why It Matters for TPRM –
- Inadequate data‑movement controls can expose third‑party data to interception, manipulation, or exfiltration.
- Vendors that claim Zero‑Trust compliance may still rely on weak gateways or unencrypted pipelines, increasing supply‑chain risk.
- Failure to validate secure data‑flow practices can lead to regulatory non‑compliance and downstream breach liability.
Who Is Affected – Enterprises across technology, financial services, healthcare, and retail that rely on cloud‑hosted applications, APIs, and SaaS platforms for data exchange.
Recommended Actions –
- Review all third‑party contracts for explicit data‑in‑transit security requirements (e.g., TLS 1.3, mutual authentication).
- Validate that vendors implement continuous monitoring of data flows and enforce encryption end‑to‑end.
- Incorporate data‑movement maturity assessments into your Zero‑Trust roadmap and vendor risk scorecards.
Technical Notes – The study highlights that many organizations still depend on legacy gateways, static VPNs, and manual ticket‑based approvals, which are prone to misconfiguration and lack real‑time visibility. No specific CVE or malware is cited; the issue is a systemic process and architecture gap. Source: The Hacker News