Zero Trust
“Never trust, always verify”: identity is the control point Zero Trust actually runs on.
What is Zero Trust?
Zero Trust is a security architecture principle, not a product: no user, device, or system should be implicitly trusted, even inside what used to be the network perimeter. Every access request is verified continuously, based on identity, device posture, and context, not network location.
In practice, Zero Trust lives or dies on identity. Conditional access, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and least-privilege access aren't optional extras to a Zero Trust architecture: they're the mechanism that makes it work.
The practical measure of all of this is blast radius: if one identity (human or machine) is compromised, how much of the estate can an attacker reach from there? A network perimeter answers that question badly, because once you're inside, you're trusted everywhere. Zero Trust exists to make that answer small on purpose: elevated access granted Just-in-Time (JIT) instead of standing permanently, conditional access policies that weigh device posture and context before every session, and MFA enforced on the requests that matter, so a single compromised credential stays a contained incident instead of an estate-wide one.
This is the same reasoning behind NIST SP 800-207, the reference architecture most Zero Trust vendors and auditors measure against: it defines a Policy Decision Point and Policy Enforcement Point evaluating every request in real time, using signals from identity, device, and behaviour together. In practice, most organisations already own the pieces (an identity provider, a device management platform, a security information and event management (SIEM) system); the actual gap is that they've never been wired together to make a single access decision.
How IAM Tech helps
Cloud Governance is where our Zero Trust work lives: designing conditional access, federation, and least-privilege access models that hold up in practice, not just on an architecture diagram.
- Conditional access and MFA policy design
- Single Sign-On (SSO) and federation across your Software as a Service (SaaS) estate
- Least-privilege, JIT access models
- Continuous verification aligned to Entra ID, Okta, and Ping Identity
Common questions
Is Zero Trust a product I can buy?
No single product delivers Zero Trust: it's an architecture pattern that typically combines an identity provider, a conditional access policy engine, device management, and monitoring, wired together to make one real-time access decision rather than working in isolation. Most organisations already own the individual pieces.
What is NIST SP 800-207?
It's the US government's reference architecture for Zero Trust, defining the Policy Decision Point and Policy Enforcement Point model most vendors and auditors measure a Zero Trust implementation against, regardless of jurisdiction.
Do I need to replace my VPN to adopt Zero Trust?
Not necessarily immediately, but a standing, always-on VPN granting broad network access is exactly what Zero Trust argues against. Most programmes replace it in phases, starting with the highest-risk access paths, rather than as a single cutover.