Blockchain, IOT, Neural Networks, Edge Computing, Zero Trust. I played buzzword bingo at RSA 2020, where the phrase dominated the entire venue. Zero Trust is a conceptual framework for cybersecurity that characterizes the principles required to protect modern organizations with distributed infrastructure, remote workforces, and web connected applications.

This is part 3 of a 3 part blog series My last two blog entries provided some key elements of a Zero Trust Network (ZTN), which focused on the tenets of zero trust and how the confidence is gained for untrusted traffic and authorized on a continual basis. The comprehensive nature of Zero Trust can be a little overwhelming in a world of limited resources, time and budgets.

The Foundation of a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) talked about the guiding principles, or tenets of Zero Trust. One of the tenets mentions how all network flows are to be authenticated before being processed and access is determined by dynamic policy. A network that is intended to never trust, and to always verify all connections requires technology that can determine confidence and authorize connections and provide that future transactions remain valid.