Decentralized Policy Enforcement in Zero Trust Architectures

The introduction of the Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) provides continuous improvement in the security of modern networks, replacing older approaches such as perimeter-based networks that rely on firewalls or VPN connections. In our paper, we describe how the basic design of a ZTA can nevertheless lead to security problems, since decisions are usually made at a central point in the network. We present an approach on how this decision can be made in a decentralized manner by the components of the network itself, in order to be able to increase the security of the component and the security of the ZTA. We demonstrate our approach in an Edge-Cloud scenario and describe all components of the ZTA, for which we provide an open source implementation.