Zero Trust - Definition

Zero Trust is an advanced security strategy that overcomes traditional, unrestricted trust in networks to prevent data leaks.

Developed by John Kindervag, Zero Trust does not automatically consider any entity (user, application, service or device) to be trustworthy. Instead, trustworthiness is continuously checked based on the context and security situation. Zero Trust is implemented in five steps: Determining the protection surface, identifying transaction flows, building the architecture, configuring policies and continuous monitoring. The strategy includes principles such as continuous monitoring, least privilege, device access control, micro-segmentation and multi-factor authentication.

Trust provides clear use cases, including risk reduction, access control for cloud and container environments, data breach protection and compliance support. The strategy minimizes the attack surface, enables secure information sharing and adapts better to modern network requirements than traditional approaches.