What is Zero Trust?

Zero Trust is a cybersecurity framework that works on the principle "never trust, always verify." It assumes that a threat could be internal or external, and therefore requires that you verify your identity when you access resources within a network.

While traditional security models trust you once you’re inside the network, Zero Trust models verify your identity each time you access a resource. It is especially helpful in our modern, distributed IT environments, like remote work.

Summary

Because old security models use a perimeter-based approach, they assume that once you’re in the system, you’re trusted. This opens up your architecture to threats that arise internally. Zero Trust replaces this with continuous verification and grants the least privilege at each step. It verifies every user, device, app, and data flow at every stage.

To implement Zero Trust security, you need these foundational pillars:

  • Identity and access management (IAM)
  • Device security
  • Network segmentation
  • App security
  • Data protection

You can build a Zero Trust architecture (ZTA) by using these pillars together in a system to reduce attack surfaces and enhance asset visibility. Zero Trust segmentation and microsegmentation reinforce security by isolating workloads and controlling access at each step so that even if there’s a breach, the blast radius is minimal.

ZTA runs on the principle of least privilege that grants users and systems the minimum access required for their tasks. Because you (and other users and devices) get as little access as needed to complete your task, insider threat risks are reduced and you get a stronger compliance with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. You can also expand the framework to encompass cloud, endpoint, and identity domains with a Zero Trust extended architecture.

Deep dive

Zero Trust architecture (ZTA)

Zero Trust architecture has context-aware policies, continuous risk assessments, and telemetry to grant or deny access. It uses segmentation and microsegmentation.

While segmentation divides your network into zones with different access rules, microsegmentation is more granular and isolates workloads, services, or data streams within a zone.

In a ZTA, the sequential process that evaluates and enforces access requests is called Zero Trust access flow, which is as follows:

  • Trust algorithms: Your trust algorithm can, for example, calculate dynamic trust scores using user behavior analytics, device health, and geolocation to help the policy engine make access decisions.
  • Policy decision points (PDP): These components—also called a policy engine—evaluate access requests against the policies you’ve defined to allow, deny, or challenge access.
  • Policy administrator (PA): The policy admin delivers PDP’s decision to the enforcement system (policy engine) and ensures that your connections are properly established or terminated.
  • Policy enforcement points (PEP): They control access by allowing or blocking traffic based on the administrator’s instructions.

Least privilege principle

The backbone of Zero Trust, this principle ensures that users and apps get only the permissions they need—nothing more. Enforcing least privilege reduces attack surfaces and helps you mitigate risks from insider threats or compromised credentials.

Just like how our parents let us access only a few TV channels—and only after checking our homework—Zero Trust grants users and devices just enough access to perform their tasks, only after verification.

To enforce least privilege, you can use just-in-time (JIT) access models. For example:

  • Engineers may get root access only during maintenance.
  • Server-to-server communication may use short-lived tokens and scopes specific to the microservice function.

How Zero Trust protects your app

Zero Trust means the app keeps on verifying its integrity and users. It ensures that APIs talk only with trusted, verified app instances, and the data is encrypted and secured at the application layer. When you apply Zero Trust directly to your app, you ensure that every device, session, and API call is trusted. This helps you because:

  1. It reduces your risk of breaches and fraud and helps protect your revenue.
  2. It helps you meet compliance and regulatory requirements by continuous verification.
  3. With a secure app, your customers trust you more and it helps build a strong reputation.
  4. You can safely add new features and updates to your app without compromising its security.

Zero Trust pillars

The seven core pillars of Zero Trust are:

  1. User identity: A ZTA ensures that only verified users can access resources, using tools like multi-factor authentication (MFA), biometrics, and identity providers from Azure, AWS, or Google. It also uses identity governance to control access and detect unusual behavior.
  2. Device security: In a Zero Trust setup, the system checks if your device is secure and compliant before letting it connect by checking its patch levels and encryption using tools like mobile device management (MDM) and unified endpoint management (UEM).
  3. Network security: In Zero Trust, you can build a secure network by controlling how devices connect and what they can access using microsegmentation so that devices can only reach the specific network zones they need. You can use encrypted tunnels (like TLS 1.3) or VPNs with strict access policies to keep data private in transit between devices and services, and monitor internal traffic to spot anything suspicious.
  4. Application workload: For your Zero Trust setup, you need to secure the communication between apps with authentication, API gateways, DevSecOps practices, and runtime application self-protection (RASP), especially in cloud-native environments where apps constantly change.
  5. Data protection: This pillar encrypts your data in storage and transit, replaces sensitive data with tokens (tokenization), watches how data is used with data loss prevention tools (DLP), and monitors user activity.
  6. Visibility and analytics: Visibility and analytics provide real-time monitoring of access, behavior, and threats using telemetry data, security information and event management (SIEM) tools to detect threats, and user behavior analytics (UBA) to inform policy updates and incident response.
  7. Automation: Your Zero Trust system will work the best when it is automatic and quick. For this, you can integrate threat intelligence, access policies, and remediation workflows into automated playbooks that respond to threats and update security rules consistently and at scale.

How to implement Zero Trust

Implementing Zero Trust is a strategic process that shifts your security mindset to “verify everything.” Here’s how you can get started:

  1. Identify protect surfaces: Unlike broad attack surfaces (like your entire environment), focus only on critical assets—your protect surface. This can include sensitive data like your users’s info, key apps like payroll or CRM, and important services like identity systems.
  2. Map data flows: After you’ve marked your critical assets to protect, you need to understand how data moves from those resources to users, devices, apps and services. This helps you visualize potential attack paths and design policies for actual traffic patterns.
  3. Architect your ZTA: To build your Zero Trust network, you can use software-defined perimeters, identity-aware proxies, and centralized policy engines. They’ll help you verify each connection and build a secure infrastructure.
  4. Create policies: You can start creating and enforcing policies that align with your business logic using least privilege and just-in-time access principles. These dynamic policies can be based on user identity, device health, time, location, and role and behavior.
  5. Monitor behavior: To keep your ZTA secure, you must continuously assess user behavior and adapt security controls. You can use SIEM, user behavior analytics, and telemetry data to monitor and analyze your ZTA, and automation tools like SOAR to enforce rules.

Zero Trust extended (ZTX)

ZTX broadens Zero Trust beyond just network boundaries. It emphasizes integrated controls across all technology layers—cloud environments, identity management systems, endpoints, and apps. It also pushes for contextual and adaptive access based on real-time intelligence.

When you go for ZTX, you can define access controls for:

  • Workloads: Isolate containers and virtual machines using Kubernetes policies and runtime controls.
  • Data: Label, encrypt, and monitor access using integrated data governance.
  • Users: Integrate with IGA (identity governance and administration) and PAM (privileged access management).
  • Devices: Use unified endpoint management (UEM) platforms to manage and secure all endpoint devices in your organization from a single console.
  • Networks: Use SD-WAN with integrated policy engines.
  • Automation: Codify Zero Trust policies into CI/CD pipelines using infrastructure as code.

Examples

  1. Surespan: When Surespan—the company that built the Burj Khalifa and SoFi Stadium—set up an operational base in Argentina in 2024, the team couldn’t access important design files for three days using a VPN. The connection was slow and its security unreliable. That is when they set up a Zero Trust network access to access resources. Since the switch, they no longer face connection drops and slow speeds.
  2. T-Mobile: Following multiple data breaches and millions of dollars in penalty, T-Mobile has committed to changing its cybersecurity strategy by adopting a Zero Trust architecture. This includes network segmentation and using multi-factor authentication.
  3. WSO2: WSO2 is a software company that creates API manangement and IAM tools. In 2024, they adopted a Zero Trust architecture to separate customer workloads from business data to enhance security.

History

When traditional perimeter-based security models couldn’t protect in cloud-driven, remote environments, Zero Trust was born.

In the early 2000s, the principle of least privilege started getting attention in enterprises with its granular access control approaches. Then in 2010, Forrester Research analyst John Kindervag called it "Zero Trust," promoting elimination of implicit trust from enterprise networks. Four years later, Google introduced BeyondCorp, its internal implementation of Zero Trust that enabled secure access to enterprise apps without relying on a traditional VPN.

With its growing importance, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed standards for Zero Trust frameworks in 2017.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when remote work and cloud became household names, Zero Trust became essential to secure distributed environments. Today, major security vendors and enterprises use Zero Trust across identity, network, app, and data security stacks.

Future

Today, remote and hybrid work, AI-driven attacks, and cloud-native architectures have become the norm. In response, Zero Trust is transitioning from a security strategy to a standard operating model.

  • AI-powered policy enforcement: AI and machine learning will be used to dynamically adjust access policies based on behavior and evolving threat intelligence, like by adjusting identity risk scores in real time.
  • Identity-first security: The shift toward identity-centric Zero Trust will accelerate and every user, device, and service interaction would be authenticated and authorized using behavior, device telemetry, geolocation, etc.
  • Cloud-native architectures: Platforms like Kubernetes are enabling identity-aware access enforcement at the container and process level, which is ideal for microservices and multi-cloud environments.
  • Compliance-driven adoption: Regulatory bodies are not behind. Their alignment with Zero Trust principle can be seen in new frameworks and sector-specific mandates (like healthcare and finance), making Zero Trust a compliance requirement.
  • Zero Trust extended (ZTX): ZTX could integrate supply chain security, quantum-resistant cryptography, and secure service-to-service communication.

Sources

  1. https://www.nccoe.nist.gov/projects/implementing-zero-trust-architecture
  2. https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/207/final
  3. https://www.cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/zero-trust-approach-security-architecture-itsm10008
  4. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/zero-trust/adopt/secure-remote-hybrid-work
  5. https://myrror.security/owasp-cheat-sheet-for-sldc-with-downloadable-xls-myrror/
  6. https://synivate.com/blog/navigating-the-future-embracing-zero-trust-security
  7. https://www.businessinsider.com/manufacturer-augmented-reality-vpn-zero-trust-network-for-connection-collaboration-2025-4
  8. https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/5286863
  9. https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24258763/t-mobile-fcc-settlement-cybersecurity-investment
  10. https://www.cncf.io/case-studies/wso2/
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