Biblio

As the COVID-19 pandemic scattered businesses and their workforces into new scales of remote work, vital security concerns arose surrounding remote access. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) also plays a growing role in the ability of companies to support remote workforces. As more enterprises embrace concepts of zero trust in their network security posture, access control policy management problems become a more significant concern as it relates to BYOD security enforcement. This BYOD security policy must enable work from home, but enterprises have a vested interest in maintaining the security of their assets. Therefore, the BYOD security policy must strike a balance between access, security, and privacy, given the personal device use. This paper explores the challenges and opportunities of enabling zero trust in BYOD use cases. We present a BYOD policy specification to enable the zero trust access control known as BYOZ. Accompanying this policy specification, we have designed a network architecture to support enterprise zero trust BYOD use cases through the novel incorporation of continuous authentication & authorization enforcement. We evaluate our architecture through a demo implementation of BYOZ and demonstrate how it can meet the needs of existing enterprise networks using BYOD.

In response to the vulnerabilities in traditional perimeter-based network security, the zero trust framework is a promising approach to secure modern network systems and address the challenges. The core of zero trust security is agent-centric trust evaluation and trust-based security decisions. The challenges, however, arise from the limited observations of the agent's footprint and asymmetric information in the decision-making. An effective trust policy needs to tradeoff between the security and usability of the network. The explainability of the policy facilitates the human understanding of the policy, the trust of the result, as well as the adoption of the technology. To this end, we formulate a zero-trust defense model using Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDP), which captures the uncertainties in the observations of the defender. The framework leads to an explainable trust-threshold policy that determines the defense policy based on the trust scores. This policy is shown to achieve optimal performance under mild conditions. The trust threshold enables an efficient algorithm to compute the defense policy while providing online learning capabilities. We use an enterprise network as a case study to corroborate the results. We discuss key factors on the trust threshold and illustrate how the trust threshold policy can adapt to different environments.

Under the situation of regular epidemic prevention and control, teleworking has gradually become a normal working mode. With the development of modern information technologies such as big data, cloud computing and mobile Internet, it's become a problem that how to build an effective security defense system to ensure the information security of teleworking in complex network environment while ensuring the availability, collaboration and efficiency of teleworking. One of the solutions is Zero Trust Network(ZTN), most enterprise infrastructures will operate in a hybrid zero trust/perimeter-based mode while continuing to invest in IT modernization initiatives and improve organization business processes. In this paper, we have systematically studied the zero trust principles, the logical components of zero trust architecture and the key technology of zero trust network. Based on the abstract model of zero trust architecture and information security technologies, a prototype has been realized which suitable for iOS terminals to access enterprise resources safely in teleworking mode.

How can high-level directives concerning risk, cybersecurity and compliance be operationalized in the central nervous system of any organization above a certain complexity? How can the effectiveness of technological solutions for security be proven and measured, and how can this technology be aligned with the governance and financial goals at the board level? These are the essential questions for any CEO, CIO or CISO that is concerned with the wellbeing of the firm. The concept of Zero Trust (ZT) approaches information and cybersecurity from the perspective of the asset to be protected, and from the value that asset represents. Zero Trust has been around for quite some time. Most professionals associate Zero Trust with a particular architectural approach to cybersecurity, involving concepts such as segments, resources that are accessed in a secure manner and the maxim “always verify never trust”. This paper describes the current state of the art in Zero Trust usage. We investigate the limitations of current approaches and how these are addressed in the form of Critical Success Factors in the Zero Trust Framework developed by ON2IT ‘Zero Trust Innovators’ (1). Furthermore, this paper describes the design and engineering of a Zero Trust artefact that addresses the problems at hand (2), according to Design Science Research (DSR). The last part of this paper outlines the setup of an empirical validation trough practitioner oriented research, in order to gain a broader acceptance and implementation of Zero Trust strategies (3). The final result is a proposed framework and associated technology which, via Zero Trust principles, addresses multiple layers of the organization to grasp and align cybersecurity risks and understand the readiness and fitness of the organization and its measures to counter cybersecurity risks.

This short paper argues that current conceptions in trust formation scholarship miss the context of zero trust, a practice growing in importance in cyber security. The contribution of this paper presents a novel approach to help conceptualize and operationalize zero trust and a call for a research agenda. Further work will expand this model and explore the implications of zero trust in future digital systems.

Zero trust security model has been picking up adoption in various organizations due to its various advantages. Data quality is still one of the fundamental challenges in data curation in many organizations where data consumers don’t trust data due to associated quality issues. As a result, there is a lack of confidence in making business decisions based on data. We design a model based on the zero trust security model to demonstrate how the trust of data consumers can be established. We present a sample application to distinguish the traditional approach from the zero trust based data quality framework.

With the construction of power information network, the power grid has built a security protection system based on boundary protection. However, with the continuous advancement of the construction of the power Internet of Things, a large number of power Internet of Things terminals need to connect to the power information network through the public network, which have an impact on the existing security protection system of the power grid. This article analyzes the characteristics of the border protection model commonly used in network security protection. Aiming at the lack of security protection capabilities of this model, a zero-trust security architecture-based power Internet of Things network security protection model is proposed. Finally, this article analyzes and studies the application of zero trust in the power Internet of Things.

IoT devices have evolved with the goal of becoming more connected. However, for security it is necessary to reduce the attack surface by allowing only necessary devices to be connected. In addition, as the number of IoT devices increases, DDoS attacks targeting IoT devices also increase. In this paper, we propose a method to apply the zero trust concept of SDP as a way to enhance security and prevent DDoS attacks in the IoT device network to which the OCF platform, one of the IoT standard platforms, is applied. The protocol proposed in this paper needs to perform additional functions in IoT devices, and the processing overhead due to the functions is 62.6ms on average. Therefore, by applying the method proposed in this paper, although there is a small amount of processing overhead, DDoS attacks targeting the IoT network can be defended and the security of the IoT network can be improved.

The notion of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) has been introduced as a fine-grained defense approach. It assumes that no entities outside and inside the protected system can be trusted and therefore requires articulated and high-coverage deployment of security controls. However, ZTA is a complex notion which does not have a single design solution; rather it consists of numerous interconnected concepts and processes that need to be assessed prior to deciding on a solution. In this paper, we outline a ZTA design methodology based on cyber risks and the identification of known high security risks. We then discuss challenges related to the design and deployment of ZTA and related solutions. We also discuss the role that service technology can play in ZTA.

Digitalisation of domains such as medical and railway utilising cloud and networking technologies such as 5G and forthcoming 6G systems presents additional security challenges. The establishment of the identity, integrity and provenance of devices, services and other functional components removed a number of attack vectors and addresses a number of so called zero-trust security requirements. The addition of trusted hardware, such as TPM, and related remote attestation integrated with the networking and cloud infrastructure will be necessary requirement.

With the rapid development and application of emerging information technology, the traditional network security architecture is more and more difficult to support flexible dynamic and a wider range of business data access requirements. Zero trust technology can truly realize the aggregation of security and business by building an end-to-end dynamic new boundary based on identity, which puts forward a new direction for the upgrade and evolution of enterprise network security architecture. This paper mainly includes access control and identity authentication management functions. The goal of access control system is to ensure that legitimate and secure users can use the system normally, and then protect the security of enterprise network and server. The functions of the access control system include identifying the user's identity (legitimacy), evaluating the security characteristics (Security) of the user's machine, and taking corresponding response strategies.

The construction of the power Internet of Things has led various terminals to access the corporate network on a large scale. The internal and external business interaction and data exchange are more extensive. The current security protection system is based on border isolation protection. This is difficult to meet the needs of the power Internet of Things connection and open shared services. This paper studies the application scheme of the ``zero trust'' typical business scenario of the power Internet of Things with ``Continuous Identity Authentication and Dynamic Access Control'' as the core, and designs the power internet security protection architecture based on zero trust.

Zero Trust security model permits to secure cloud native applications while encrypting all network communication, authenticating, and authorizing every request. The service mesh can enable Zero Trust using a side-car proxy without changes to the application code. To the best of our knowledge, no previous work has provided a performance analysis of Zero Trust in a multi-cloud environment. This paper proposes a multi-cloud framework and a testing workflow to analyse performance of the data plane under load and the impact on the control plane, when Zero Trust is enabled. The results of preliminary tests show that Istio has reduced latency variability in responding to sequential HTTP requests. Results also reveal that the overall CPU and memory usage can increase based on service mesh configuration and the cloud environment.

In order to guarantee the normal operation of the power Internet of things devices, the zero-trust idea was used for studying the security protection strategies of devices from four aspects: user authentication, equipment trust, application integrity and flow baselines. Firstly, device trust is constructed based on device portrait; then, verification of device application integrity based on MD5 message digest algorithm to achieve device application trustworthiness. Next, the terminal network traffic baselines are mined from OpenFlow, a southbound protocol in SDN. Finally, according to the dynamic user trust degree attribute access control model, the comprehensive user trust degree was obtained by weighting the direct trust degree. It obtained from user authentication and the trust degree of user access to terminal communication traffic. And according to the comprehensive trust degree, users are assigned the minimum authority to access the terminal to realize the security protection of the terminal. According to the comprehensive trust degree, the minimum permissions for users to access the terminal were assigned to achieve the security protection of the terminal. The research shows that the zero-trust mechanism is applied to the terminal security protection of power Internet of Things, which can improve the reliability of the safe operation of terminal equipment.

Under the background of increasingly severe security situation, the new working mode of power mobile internet business anytime and anywhere has greatly increased the complexity of network interaction. At the same time, various means of breaking through the boundary protection and moving laterally are emerging in an endless stream. The existing boundary-based mobility The security protection architecture is difficult to effectively respond to the current complex and diverse network attacks and threats, and faces actual combat challenges. This article first analyzes the security risks faced by the existing power mobile Internet services, and conducts a collaborative analysis of the key points of zero-trust based security protection from multiple perspectives such as users, terminals, and applications; on this basis, from identity security authentication, continuous trust evaluation, and fine-grained access The dimension of control, fine-grained access control based on identity trust, and the design of a zero-trust-based power mobile interconnection business security protection framework to provide theoretical guidance for power mobile business security protection.

Cloud storage is a low-cost and convenient storage method, but the nature of cloud storage determines the existence of security risks for data uploaded by users. In order to ensure the security of users' data in third-party cloud platforms, a zero trust security platform for data trusteeship is proposed. The platform introduces the concept of zero trust, which meets the needs of users to upload sensitive data to untrusted third-party cloud platforms by implementing multiple functional modules such as sensitivity analysis service, cipher index service, attribute encryption service.

With the rise of the cloud computing and services, the network environments tend to be more complex and enormous. Security control becomes more and more hard due to the frequent and various access and requests. There are a few techniques to solve the problem which developed separately in the recent years. Network Micro-Segmentation provides the system the ability to keep different parts separated. Zero Trust Model ensures the network is access to trusted users and business by applying the policy that verify and authenticate everything. With the combination of Segmentation and Zero Trust Model, a system will obtain the ability to control the access to organizations' or industrial valuable assets. To implement the cooperation, the paper designs a strategy named light verification to help the process to be painless for the cost of inspection. The strategy was found to be effective from the perspective of the technical management, security and usability.

Perimeter models, which provide access control for protecting resources on networks, make authorization decisions using the source network of access requests as one of critical factors. However, such models are problematic because once a network is intruded, the attacker gains access to all of its resources. To overcome the above problem, a Zero Trust Network (ZTN) is proposed as a new security model in which access control is performed by authenticating users who request access and then authorizing such requests using various information about users and devices called contexts. To correctly make authorization decisions, this model must take a large amount of various contexts into account. However, in some cases, an access control mechanism cannot collect enough context to make decisions, e.g., when an organization that enforces access control joins the identity federation and uses systems operated by other organizations. This is because the contexts collected using the systems are stored in individual systems and no federation exists for sharing contexts. In this study, we propose the concept of a Zero Trust Federation (ZTF), which applies the concept of ZTN under the identity federation, and a method for sharing context among systems of organizations. Since context is sensitive to user privacy, we also propose a mechanism for sharing contexts under user control. We also verify context sharing by implementing a ZTF prototype.

The risk of cyber-attack is omnipresent, there are lots of threat actors in the cyber field and the number of attacks increases every day. The paper defines currently the most discussed supply chain attacks, briefly summarizes significant events of successful supply chain attacks and outlines complex strategy leading to the prevention of such attacks; the strategy which can be used not only by civil organizations but governmental ones, too. Risks of supply chain attacks against the Czech army are taken into consideration and possible mitigations are suggested.

Current FAA strategic objectives include a migration to Trajectory Based Operations (TBO) with the integration of time-based management data and tools to increase efficiencies and reduce operating costs within the National Airspace System (NAS). Under TBO, integration across various FAA systems will take on greater importance than ever. To ensure the security of this integration without impacting data and tool availability, the FAA should consider adopting a Zero Trust Framework (ZTF) into the NAS.ZTF was founded on the belief that strong boundary security protections alone (traditionally referred to as the castle-moat approach) were no longer adequate to protecting critical data from outside threats and, with ever-evolving threat sophistication, contamination within a network perimeter is assumed to already exist (see Figure 1).To address this, theorists developed a framework where trust is controlled and applied to all internal network devices, users, and applications in what was termed a "Never Trust; Always Verify" approach to distinguish the authorized from the unauthorized elements wanting to access network data.To secure achievement of TBO objectives and add defensive depth to counter potential insider threats, the FAA must consider implementing a hybrid approach to the ZTF theory. This would include continued use of existing boundary protections provided by the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI) network, with the additional strength afforded by the application of ZTF, in what is called the NAS Zero Trust eXtended (ZTX) platform.This paper discusses a proposal to implement a hybrid ZTX approach to securing TBO infrastructure and applications in the NAS.

Physical unclonable functions(PUFs) are widely used as hardware root-of-trust to secure IoT devices, data and services. A PUF exploits inherent randomness introduced during manufacturing to give a unique digital fingerprint. Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM) based PUFs can be used as a mature technology for authentication. An SRAM with a number of SRAM cells gives an unrepeatable and random pattern of 0's and 1's during power on. As it is a unique pattern, it can be called as SRAM fingerprint and can be used as a PUF. The chance of producing more number of same values (either zero or one) is higher during power on. If a particular value present at almost all the cell during power on, it will lead to the dominance of either zero or one in the cryptographic key sequence. As the cryptographic key is generated by randomly taking address location of SRAM cells, (the subset of power on values of all the SRAM cells)the probability of occurring the same sequence most of the time is higher. In order to avoid that situation, SRAM should have to produce an equal number of zeros and ones during power on. SRAM PUF is implemented in Cadence Virtuoso tool. To generate equal zeros and ones during power on, variations can be done in the physical dimensions and to increase the stability body biasing can be effectively done.

The bioinformatics features are collected by pattern recognition technology, and the digital coding and format conversion of the feature data are realized by using the theory of topological group transformation. Authentication and Signature based on Zero Knowledge Proof Technology can be used as the trusted credentials of cloud platform and cannot be forged, thus realizing trusted and secure access.

Access to data at large scales expedites the progress of research in medical fields. Nevertheless, accessibility to patients' data faces significant challenges on regulatory, organizational and technical levels. In light of this, we present a novel approach based on the crowdsourcing paradigm to solve this data scarcity problem. Utilizing the infrastructure that blockchain provides, our decentralized platform enables researchers to solicit contributions to their well-defined research study from a large crowd of volunteers. Furthermore, to overcome the challenge of breach of privacy and mutual trust, we employed the cryptographic primitive of Zero-knowledge Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK). This not only allows participants to make contributions without exposing their privacy-sensitive health data, but also provides a means for a distributed network of users to verify the validity of the contributions in an efficient manner. Finally, since without an incentive mechanism in place, the crowdsourcing platform would be rendered ineffective, we incorporated smart contracts to ensure a fair reciprocal exchange of data for reward between patients and researchers.

The blockchain's cross-chain atomic exchange uses smart contracts to replace trusted third parties, but atomic exchange cannot guarantee the anonymity of transactions, and it will inevitably increase the risk of privacy leakage. Therefore, this paper proposes an atom based on zero-knowledge proof. Improved methods of exchange to ensure the privacy of both parties in a transaction. The anonymous improvement scheme in this article uses the UTXO unconsumed model to add a new anonymous list in the blockchain. When sending assets to smart contracts, zero-knowledge proof is used to provide self-certification of ownership of the asset, and then the transaction is broken down. Only the hash value of the transaction is sent to the node, and the discarded list is used to verify the validity of the transaction, which achieves the effect of storing assets anonymously in the smart contract. At the same time, a smart contract is added when the two parties in the transaction communicate to exchange the contract address of the newly set smart contract between the two parties in the transaction. This can prevent the smart contract address information from being stolen when the two parties in the transaction communicate directly.

The 5G network solutions currently standardised and deployed do not yet enable the full potential of pervasive networking and computing envisioned in 5G initial visions: network services and slices with different QoS profiles do not span multiple operators; security, trust and automation is limited. The evolution of 5G towards a truly production-level stage needs to heavily rely on automated end-to-end network operations, use of distributed Artificial Intelligence (AI) for cognitive network orchestration and management and minimal manual interventions (zero-touch automation). All these elements are key to implement highly pervasive network infrastructures. Moreover, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) can be adopted to implement distributed security and trust through Smart Contracts among multiple non-trusted parties. In this paper, we propose an initial concept of a zero-touch security and trust architecture for ubiquitous computing and connectivity in 5G networks. Our architecture aims at cross-domain security & trust orchestration mechanisms by coupling DLTs with AI-driven operations and service lifecycle automation in multi-tenant and multi-stakeholder environments. Three representative use cases are identified through which we will validate the work which will be validated in the test facilities at 5GBarcelona and 5TONIC/Madrid.