• Identity-driven attacks are the leading cause of breaches, making continuous verification essential at any scale.
• Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) eliminates assumptions of trust and strengthens defenses at every layer in a hybrid environment.
• Layered security—with Zero Trust principles at the heart—is the final step in securing hybrid environments. 

When three in five incidents (60%) involve identity abuse, attackers don’t need to break in. They just log in. And once inside, lateral movement can take them nearly anywhere. All it takes is one compromised endpoint to open the door to the entire environment. These old-school perimeters never even stood a chance against the highly advanced persistent threats (APTs) dominating today’s cyberscape. 

Under constant pressure, legacy perimeters continue to bend and break in hybrid environments, spilling risk all over the enterprise. These cracks reveal just how many challenges the security of hybrid architectures already faces—including shallow visibility, inconsistent policies, and fragmented teams. Which brings us to the last (and maybe most critical) gap left: authentication. Particularly, the outdated belief that once a user or device is cleared, it should be trusted by default forever. 

With our current climate, that’s as far from the truth as believing a locked door means no one can break in. Hybrid environments that combine cloud and on-premises assets can be inherently complex, and that complexity can create security vulnerabilities and blind spots. These organizations desperately need identity-first security, and that’s easily achieved by returning to a true Zero Trust strategy. Instead of assuming anything allowed to enter the environment is trustworthy, Zero Trust persistently verifies users, devices, and software. Under this continuous verification model, access and control are redefined to finally match the labyrinthine realities of hybrid systems. 

Why hybrid infrastructures need ZTNA 

As organizations adopt hybrid infrastructures, security must extend across on-premises hardware and applications in private data centers, as well as public or private clouds. Because most traditional perimeter-based approaches assume trust once a user, device or executable is inside the network, risky gaps are left wide open across these complex environments. Zero Trust closes these gaps by eliminating these assumptions and requiring explicit, continuous verification for any access request spanning the entire hybrid environment. 

But what really puts these principles into practice is Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). Dissatisfied with the meager basics, ZTNA relies on so much more than a simple username and password. Every request is explicitly verified no matter where it originates from—on-premises, in the cloud, or even from a remote connection. ZTNA directly tackles the identity problem by continuously verifying every user and system, unifying security across hybrid infrastructures for stronger security posture that spans the entire hybrid infrastructure. 

Is a hybrid workforce resilient without ZTNA?

Hybrid workforces, which require hybrid environments to enable them, add even more complexity. A recent Gallup survey found half of organizations maintain a hybrid workforce, with employees working both onsite and remotely. That’s nearly half the workforce working outside the hard walls of corporate offices at least some of the time. These organizations can’t really afford to keep overlooking their security.  

The good news? With ZTNA, you don’t have to. As employees move between homes, offices, coffee shops, and airports, their security context shifts with them—and so does the integrity of their logins. Legacy systems often tie trust to location—an approach that falls apart in hybrid setups. But ZTNA nixes implicit trust based on geography or network by enforcing its primary ethos: never trust, always verify.

With the right layers in place, ZTNA simplifies and strengthens the security of hybrid environments and workforces in ways legacy systems can only dream of. 

Amplify ZTNA with strong layers of security

Zero Trust may be the foundation of a modern hybrid security posture, but it works best when it's reinforced by complementary layers, or better yet, a unified defense stack. 

Like synchronized battle units, united under the Zero Trust banner, these tools deliver airtight security together: 

• A Secure Web Gateway (SWG) acts like a filter for internet traffic, blocking malicious sites and downloads before they can touch any data or devices. It keeps users safe while they browse, no matter where they are–and it reinforces a hallmark of strong security: stopping threats as far away from endpoints as possible.
• Unified endpoint security keeps the front line resilient by checking device posture before it enters the network, blocking risky endpoints at the door, and reducing the amount of entry points attackers can wiggle in through.
• Automation and AI step in as an extra set of eyes, connecting the dots across different environments so analysts can see the bigger picture. That way they can spend less time on alerts and more time prioritizing the threats that would otherwise end badly.
• Encryption locks down sensitive data on the move, sealing it off from prying eyes. Even if bad actors try to intercept communications, encryption helps to ensure they won’t be happy with their haul.
• Data loss prevention (DLP) quietly monitors for leaks, stopping insiders or compromised accounts from moving sensitive information where it clearly doesn’t belong. DLP’s the guardrail that keeps data from slipping into the wrong hands.
• Secure Service Edge (SSE) is what brings it all together, combining layers into a unified security stack that protects hybrid and cloud environments without overcomplicating access or slowing down workflows. 

Together, these layers, along with network threat, malware and content inspection and web isolation, extend the “never trust, always verify” banner across users, networks, endpoints, and data. 

And once deployed, organizations start seeing benefits like: 

• Stronger protection against identity-driven breaches and lateral movement.
• Consistent policy enforcement across cloud and on-premises, avoiding silos that slow incident response.
• A better user experience, with secure access replacing clunky VPNs.
• Future-proof defenses that adapt and scale with your hybrid environment. 

These outcomes prove Zero Trust can go from theory to practical, scalable security, especially in hybrid environments. But to turn those principles into action, organizations need solutions that are firmly founded in Zero Trust.

The strongest hybrid security posture starts here

Hybrid environments have a long list of pros, especially when it comes to flexibility, but the cons can make them tricky to secure, especially without the tools that make it simple. 

With a security stack grounded in Zero Trust principles, you can take the complexity out of hybrid systems. Explicit verification is enforced at every layer, ensuring its principles are carried throughout endpoints, data, and users. Comprehensive approaches that provide truly consistent protection across every environment are the future of security, and ZTNA stands at the heart of it. 

When paired with the right integrations, ZTNA turns the Zero Trust framework from a founding principle to a powerful defense strategy that can’t be messed with. Symantec ZTNA delivers these protections at scale, simplifying access control while strengthening defenses across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. But ZTNA isn’t just a standalone tool—it’s a critical component of an effective SSE solution. Symantec Security Service Edge, for instance, recently delivered a 75% breach risk reduction over three years, as reported in Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ study of Symantec SSE.

And with Symantec DLP as the perfect partner to ZTNA, you can extend the same Zero Trust protection directly to your data—wherever it lives or however it moves. 

The pathway to resilient hybrid defenses starts here—stream Navigating the Challenges of Securing Hybrid Environments on-demand and see how Zero Trust strengthens every layer in your stack.