Zero Trust Architecture#

Zero trust means no implicit trust. A request from inside the corporate network is treated with the same suspicion as a request from the public internet. Every request must prove who it is, what it is allowed to do, and that it is coming from a healthy device or service — regardless of network location.

This is not a product you buy. It is an architectural approach that requires changes to authentication, authorization, network design, and monitoring.

The Core Principle#

Zero trust networking operates on a simple premise: no network location is inherently trusted. Being inside the corporate network, inside a VPC, or inside a Kubernetes cluster does not grant access to anything. Every request must be authenticated, authorized, and encrypted regardless of where it originates.

This is a departure from the traditional castle-and-moat model where a VPN places you “inside” the network and everything inside is implicitly trusted. That model fails because attackers who breach the perimeter have unrestricted lateral movement. Zero trust eliminates the concept of inside versus outside.