Zero Trust Model : A Security Strategy to Protect Critical Systems

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Zero Trust model is a comprehensive security model that aims to protect critical systems and sensitive data. The foundation of Zero Trust model is that it does not trust anyone including internal users behind a firewall. It does not allow access or perform a transaction by any user, without due authorization. Zero trust assumes that every attempt to access the network, applications or data as a threat until due authentication and authorization is confirmed.

The prime purpose of Zero Trust archetecture is to prevent data breaches. It provides organisations higher visibility of their data and user activities related to data, and gives the ability to detect suspicious behaviors that may cause a potential data leak.

Zero Trust framework requires all users to be identified, authenticated, authorized and continuesly validated to access applications and data on the network. It follows strict user and device identity verification process  when attempting to access network resources regardless of access level of the user. The zero trust model assumes that each user either external or internal could be a potential attacker, hence challenges the user to prove who they are and level of authorization. As Zero trust model challenges even the internal users, an attacker gaining access to a network may not be able to access applications within the network.

Zero Trust security involves multiple technologies and processes, which aimed to ensure data security by detecting abnormal data access that may  lead to a major data breach.

Zero trust strategy adopts the least-privilege access model by limiting user access to  minimal resources essential to perform their job, hence limits acccess to data in the organization on need to know basis.

Zero trust makes navigating between networks extremely difficult by segmenting the network and  isolating traffic using next-gen firewalls.

humans are vulnerable to social engineering attacks, despite effectively hardened security, hence becomes the weakest link in your security strategy. Zero trust security strategies enabled monitoring, limiting, and  enforcing strict access to applications and data by internal and external users. It continuesly verifies all user activities and log them for further review. For example traditional applications authenticates and authorize users only once at login, but zero trust policy authenticates and check authorization at every access. 

End point devices like smartphones, IoT, laptops are  potential attack points that hackers might exploit. In a Zero Trust environment, they are isolated, secured, controlled and monitored against potential threats.

Zero trust tools help advanced threat detection and user behavior analytics to identify abnormal behavior in real-time. 

In a Zero trust cyber security environment:

  • All users require secure and authenticated access to all resources.
  • Organisations adopt a least-privilege model for access control.
  • The access and group memberships are audited on a regular schedule.

When implementing zero trust model:

  • Identify sensitive data to deploy protection measures. 
  • Limit access to data based on sensitivity. 
  • Audit access permissions based on individual, group, and organizational levels.
  • Detect suspicious activity and threats by monitoring access, loging  and  analytics 


Niranjan Meegammana 

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