Why Zero Trust Can’t Be Fully Trusted
Despite its promise, the Zero Trust approach to cybersecurity is often more notional than actual in its deployment. Many enterprises today are far from reaping the full benefits that a truly Zero Trust system can offer. According to Gartner, only 10 percent of large organizations will have a mature and comprehensive Zero Trust system by 2026. Moreover, the continual reliance on human operators means that Zero Trust systems can only be as dependable as the individuals managing them. This inconvenient truth should be considered before placing too much faith in systems touted as ‘Zero Trust’. However, Zero Trust can indeed live up to its name with the integration of new tools that address the vulnerabilities inherent in the standard approach to utilizing this system.
Zero Trust and Human Factors
Zero Trust operates under the blanket rule that all access requests must be authenticated. Unfortunately, the mantra of ‘never trust, always verify’ unravels when human elements are introduced. Humans configure the security tools, make decisions on exceptions, and assemble the underlying IT infrastructure. This dependence signifies significant trust in human operators, creating a substantial caveat for Zero Trust systems.
Embedding Zero Trust from Top to Bottom
In an era where social engineering attacks are increasingly sophisticated, partly driven by advancements in AI, humans present a considerable vulnerability for hackers to exploit. It’s high time for companies to move beyond merely mitigating the risk of human interference and instead aim to eliminate it.
This shift requires incorporating new tools such as security protections rooted within endpoint hardware and the foundational fabric of computing infrastructure. For instance, modern CPU and SoC platforms offer trusted execution environments (TEEs) that can be used to enforce isolated memory regions, verified cryptographically even through remote attestation.
New paradigm chip architectures allow the compartmentalization of systems into autonomous trust domains, or ‘realms’, to confine the damage in the event of a breach. Additionally, systems like hardware-verified boot, firmware integrity checks, and automatic emergency recovery embed security functions at the hardware level.
Relying solely on software safeguards cannot match the level of protection provided by hardware-enforced security. This is partly due to the fact that software-based solutions depend on administrators setting the policies for Zero Trust. The unavoidable reality of human error makes purely software-based solutions an unnecessary risk when security architecture can be embedded at the hardware level.
Enlisting AI for Further Support
Beyond hardware-enforced security, a further step toward eliminating human error is incorporating AI-driven policy engines. AI can process attestation measurements and environmental telemetry from hardware root-of-trust components. The AI system can then enforce a range of Zero Trust controls, including fine-grained microsegmentation, cryptographic segmentation, and least privilege access. By combining hardware solutions with AI, human involvement and software vulnerabilities are minimized, thanks to automated policy enforcement and real-time threat detection.
It’s even feasible to create a security architecture that is non-configurable by human administrators, completely eliminating the possibility of a misconfiguration. On a personal level, true Zero Trust provides peace of mind, freeing administrators from the burden of second-guessing whether a human-generated exploit is hiding in the shadows. A foundation of hardware-rooted AI security is the missing ingredient in what can be genuinely described as Zero Trust.
Setting the Stage for True Zero Trust
Zero Trust security is an ideal that has been undervalued due to reliance on software and human operators. However, by integrating hardware-enforced security and AI-driven policy engines, Zero Trust can now fulfill its promise. In today’s business world, heavily reliant on digital environments, it’s too risky to depend on the hidden vulnerabilities of Zero Trust in its default form. An overhaul at the hardware level, coupled with AI-driven controls and threat detection, is necessary to bridge the gap between the concept and the reality of true Zero Trust.
