Do you think Biden's executive order accurately represented Zero Trust architecture?
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We are on a mission to drive transparency, so what we're looking at right now is where the Zero Trust starts/stops, especially the handshake between systems. We just looked at a solution that gives full transparency of the data, and when we did a proof of concept it identified some operations that were configured incorrectly. When the systems start talking to each other, you configure it to operate against policy, but with millions of lines of code, you can't check everything.
Very true it would be very difficult. In oversimplified terms, the Zero Trust might start with/at the producer of the data packet (human/machine or cyber-physical system) and end with/at it's consumer's output (human/machine or cyber-physical system) If both systems are deemed ZeroTrust compliant, the handshake should technically be compliant as well, removing some of the overhead. Introspecting the packet between header and footer could then become the focus. Depending on the system applying ML or even pattern recognition could also reduce the overhead while providing the transparency you seek.
The executive order has a pretty good definition of Zero Trust architecture that says it's “an acknowledgement that threats exist both inside and outside of traditional network boundaries. The Zero Trust security model eliminates implicit trust in any one element/node/service, and instead requires continuous verification from multiple sources to determine access and coordinate system wide.” Here are formal definitions of Zero Trust from NIST (https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-207/final) and DoD (https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/(U)ZT_RA_v1.1(U)_Mar21.pdf).
I honestly think we need to drop the "user" terminology and sub in "producers or consumers" of data.
They refer to a Zero Trust architecture but there's no acknowledgement that the packet is not a human being. The packet is what has Zero Trust—that's what needs to be looked at.