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As were shifting more of our personal and professional lives online, protecting our online security and privacy has become more challenging than ever before.

Security breaches are still on the rise and cybercriminals are constantly coming up with new, more sophisticated cyberattacks that can sneak past traditional security solutions. Utilizing a virtual private network (VPN), a password manager, or secure cloud storage is repeatedly recommended as a way to reduce this risk.

But how can you be sure the service provider will keep all your sensitive data a secret? Well, the solution lies in zero-knowledge security.

The zero-knowledge security model utilizes zero-knowledge encryption and data segregation to make sure all your data is safe from data breaches. If your service provider has a so-called zero-knowledge architecture, it means it doesnt know anything about the data your store on its servers nor has a way to access itthats why we call it "zero-knowledge".

Some of the core principles of the zero-knowledge security model are:

As you can see, with the zero-knowledge security model youre the only one who can access your data in its unencrypted, readable form. So, even if the company storing your data gets hacked and cybercriminals get their filthy hands on your data, they wont be able to do anything with it. Not even the company itself can access your unencrypted data, let alone common cybercriminals.

However, as weve learned from the unfortunate case of the LastPass data breach, theres still a small chance that criminal minds could make off with some parts of your datawith unencrypted site URLs, customer names, email addresses, and partial credit card numbers in this case.

However, LastPass is still the only password manager that suffered a serious data breach, otherwise, password managers are one of the safest ways to store your passwords.

Were living in a world where our personal information is not only stored and processed by a worrying number of organizations but also sold to third parties and used in marketing. If compromised in a data breach, this information could put us at risk of identity theft.

Besides being bad news for customers, data breaches are bad for businesses toothey can deal long-term damage to the company's reputation, lead to financial loss, and leave a company without its most valuable asset, its data.

However, theres a solution to this serious cybersecurity challenge, and it starts with applying a zero-knowledge security model and building a cybersecurity architecture around it. With all customer data being encrypted on the customer side, even in the event of a data breach only encrypted data can be exposed to cyber criminalsand the power of zero-knowledge encryption makes this data useless to them.

Combined with zero trust, zero-knowledge security can stop most data breachesor ease the consequences of them at the very least. So, its pretty safe to say the zero-knowledge security model is here to stay.

Companies that store sensitive data can only benefit from the implementation of zero-knowledge architecture, and the same is true for their customersusso, its a win-win situation for both companies and their customers.

Original post:
What Is Zero-Knowledge Security and Why Is It Critical Today? - MUO - MakeUseOf