What Is Zero-Trust Security

Gartner projects that by 2026, 10% of large enterprises will have developed mature and measurable zero-trust programs in place, a significant rise from less than 1% today. Zero-trust architecture (ZTA) replaces implicit trust with dynamic, risk-based authentication and continuous verification, adapting security postures in real time. Organizations without a zero-trust model experience breaches that result in expenses exceeding those of enterprises with zero-trust strategies by $1 million.

Zero trust implementation, like any digital transformation, is a demanding and resource-intensive process, often accompanied by notable challenges. The most prevalent hurdles include technology gaps (73%) and financial constraints (69%). Nevertheless, organizations that embrace a zero-trust security model are at the forefront of innovation, gaining a significant competitive edge. The key benefits of adopting a zero-trust strategy include lowering security risks (68%), simplifying the management of the security stack (57%), and improving mean time to detection (MTTD) (50%).

Zero Trust Definition

According to Gartner, zero trust is a security framework that explicitly identifies users and devices and grants them only the necessary level of access so the business can operate with minimal friction and reduced risks. Zero trust can be considered an ongoing process designed to support customers navigating the ever-evolving threat landscape rather than a destination in the cybersecurity journey. The concept embraces continuous adaptation and proactive measures to ensure robust protection against evolving risks.

What Are Zero-Trust Standards

As third-party incidents have widespread consequences, with 84% causing operational disruptions and 66% resulting in financial losses, their increasing risks are becoming a major security concern.

Zero-trust architecture comes as a feasible third-party risk management solution. It represents a major shift from traditional network security, which relied on the “trust but verify” model. The former approach inherently trusted users and devices within the network perimeter, leaving organizations vulnerable to internal threats and compromised credentials. 

Zero trust requires continuous monitoring and validation of users and devices to ensure appropriate access privileges and policy compliance. Unlike one-time validation, this model considers additional layers of security protection and dynamic factors, such as user identity, device compliance, behavior patterns, geolocation, and security threats. Real-time enforcement relies on broad enterprise telemetry, threat intelligence, and AI/ML analytics for accurate policy decisions.

Organizations must assess their IT infrastructure and attack paths, implementing measures such as segmentation by device type or identity and restricting risky protocols like RDP to specific credentials. The 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report reveals that stolen or misused credentials remain a focal point of cyber-attacks, with 24% of initial breach actions involving them. This underscores the urgent need to protect identity credentials from their misuse for offensive purposes. The adoption of a zero-trust security model extends protections to credentials, email, and secure web gateways to mitigate risks, safeguard accounts, and future-proof the organization’s security posture.

What Are the Core Principles of the Zero Trust Model Based on NIST SP 800-207 and How SOC Prime Follows Them

As of April 2025, over 11,000 enterprises rely on SOC Prime to provide updated visibility on threats against their zero-trust security principles. To risk-optimize the customers’ cybersecurity posture, SOC Prime adheres to the NIST Special Publication 800-207, the most vendor-agnostic standard acting as the security benchmark for zero trust. 

As per NIST SP 800-207, no single vendor can provide a complete zero-trust solution, and relying on one may introduce vendor lock-in risks. Interoperability is crucial both at the time of adoption and throughout the lifecycle of security systems.
Operating on ZTA, SOC Prime ensures compliance with the least privilege and data access controls to minimize the risk of breaches. SOC Prime provides cross-platform analytics and vendor-neutral visibility along with smart data orchestration and automation as recommended by CISA within its Zero Trust Maturity Model. According to the ZTA principles, all users are required to pass authentication, authorization, and continuous validation for security configuration prior to gaining and maintaining access to the company’s applications and data. The zero-trust approach relies on real-time visibility into the user identity and credential privileges on each device to prevent potential data breaches.

Keeping All the Data Where it Lives

SOC Prime’s Attack Detective is built on the ZTA milestones, enabling organizations to risk-optimize their cybersecurity posture. It provides complete visibility based on the organization-specific logs to query data in its native location. This enables avoiding data duplication or distribution and possible permission inconsistency for the same data across different locations, which ensures compliance with zero-trust basic tenets and is aligned with the least privilege principles according to the operative definition of ZTA as per NIST SP 800-207. 

Clear Segregation Between the Control Plane and Data Plane

SOC Prime treats SIEM, EDR, and Data Lake platforms as Data Planes in line with NIST SP 800-207 Zero Trust Architecture standard. SOC Prime Platform equips teams with advanced tools for threat detection and hunting, running data audits, sourcing rules and queries, sending detection algorithms to the platforms in use, while not taking any data back as opposed to other vendors’ approach. 

By separating the data and control planes, SOC Prime follows NIST 800-207, ensuring role-based access without storing, transferring, or inheriting SIEM, EDR, or Data Lake credentials or other sensitive data. According to the company’s access request procedure, access to the organization’s data and each SIEM environment cannot be automatically inherited. Different accounts are used for SOC Prime’s Attack Detective policy configuration and for data storage access in different tenants, with clear segregation between the control plane and the data plane. 

Zero-Trust Backed by AI

Gartner identifies AI as a crucial driver for building a scalable zero-trust architecture. By 2028, 60% of zero trust solutions will leverage AI to detect unusual activity and potential threats in real time, allowing for proactive cybersecurity responses.

SOC Prime delivers AI-powered threat detection that enhances SIEM, EDR, and Data Lake systems while prioritizing privacy. Users control their data, ensuring security without extra costs. SOC Prime users decide what to send, when to send it, and whether to enable AI functionality at all. As AI continues to evolve, integrating it into the organization’s zero-trust model will contribute to maintaining a more resilient cybersecurity posture.

What Are the Organizational Considerations for Zero Trust?

Zero-trust security, once a concept, is now increasingly seen as a crucial response to securing digital evolution and tackling complex cyber threats. It can benefit any organization but is especially valuable for enterprise-grade security protection where safeguarding multi-cloud, hybrid, and legacy systems, unmanaged devices, and SaaS applications is of paramount importance. It’s also imperative when addressing continuously evolving threats, like ransomware attacks and insider threats. Moreover, if organizations face common security challenges, such as limited SOC expertise, user experience concerns, and industry compliance hurdles, zero trust can be tailored to meet these needs and deliver a solid ROI on their security efforts.

However, considering the benefits of adopting a zero-trust approach, it cannot be a standalone solution and should be part of broader cybersecurity strategies. Organizations should also invest in the adoption of responsible AI technology, actionable threat intelligence, and automation to future-proof cyber resilience against emerging threats.