What is a Zero Trust Extended Framework

What is a zero trust extended framework?

A Zero Trust Extended Framework (ZTX Framework) builds upon the traditional Zero Trust model to create a more comprehensive, holistic approach to securing enterprise networks, data, and resources. It extends beyond simply verifying user identity and device health to ensure every component, including applications, data, network infrastructure, and cloud services, is also secured under the Zero Trust principle of “never trust, always verify.”

Here’s a breakdown of how this extended framework is structured:

1. Identity Security: Ensures that each individual, whether human or machine, is continuously authenticated and authorized for the right level of access, using methods like multi-factor authentication (MFA), single sign-on (SSO), and adaptive access policies.
2. Device Security: Focuses on verifying that all devices accessing the network are secure, compliant, and meet organizational standards. This includes monitoring endpoint security, device health, and enforcing policies that restrict access based on risk assessments.
3. Network Security: Traditionally, network security meant using a perimeter-based approach, but in Zero Trust, it involves micro-segmentation, strict access control, and isolation of network traffic to limit lateral movement and reduce attack surfaces within the network.
4. Application Security: Applications are secured through application-layer access policies, ensuring that users have access only to the specific applications necessary for their roles. This minimizes the risk of internal threats and unauthorized access.
5. Data Security: A Zero Trust Extended Framework involves protecting data at every stage—whether at rest, in transit, or in use. Data protection policies include encryption, data classification, and implementing data access controls that ensure only authorized users can access specific datasets.
6. Analytics and Intelligence: A ZTX framework includes real-time monitoring, threat intelligence, and advanced analytics to detect, respond to, and prevent suspicious activities. By analyzing user and entity behavior, security teams can identify and mitigate risks proactively.
7. Automation and Orchestration: By automating and orchestrating responses to threats, Zero Trust frameworks can reduce the response time to incidents, improve resilience, and free up resources for other security tasks.
8. User Experience: An often-overlooked part of an extended Zero Trust framework is user experience. A ZTX framework aims to balance security and usability, providing seamless access to resources without interrupting workflows.

In essence, a Zero Trust Extended Framework is about building a multi-layered, dynamic security architecture that enforces strict access controls across all aspects of an organization’s digital environment. This approach goes beyond just authenticating users and devices and integrates security at every level—identity, device, network, applications, and data—ensuring that security is consistent, adaptive, and resilient across the organization.

How does NAC fit into a zero trust extended framework?

Network Access Control (NAC) plays a critical role in a Zero Trust Extended Framework (ZTX Framework) by enforcing security at the network level, ensuring that only authenticated and authorized users and devices can connect to enterprise resources. Here’s how NAC aligns with and supports each component of a ZTX Framework:

1. Identity Security: NAC solutions integrate with identity providers (IdPs) and single sign-on (SSO) services to verify user identity before granting network access. This allows NAC to enforce role-based access policies, ensuring users can only reach resources aligned with their identity and permissions. NAC often incorporates multi-factor authentication (MFA) as an additional layer, strengthening identity assurance before a user is allowed on the network.
2. Device Security: NAC solutions perform continuous device posture checks, assessing whether a device meets security and compliance standards before allowing it onto the network. This includes verifying operating system updates, antivirus status, endpoint protection, and configurations. If a device doesn’t meet these requirements, NAC can enforce policies to restrict or quarantine it until it’s compliant, significantly reducing the risk of compromised devices moving within the network.
3. Network Security (Micro-segmentation): NAC enables micro-segmentation by limiting users and devices to specific network segments based on access needs, minimizing lateral movement. For instance, NAC can dynamically assign VLANs or use virtual network segmentation to restrict device communication only to necessary areas of the network. This segmentation isolates sensitive resources and makes it more challenging for unauthorized users or compromised devices to gain access beyond their assigned segment.
4. Application Security: By integrating with application-level security policies, NAC helps enforce application-specific access controls based on user roles and device security posture. For instance, NAC can limit network access to specific application servers for certain users, ensuring that users can only reach the applications they need without exposing unnecessary resources.
5. Data Security: NAC indirectly supports data security by controlling access to network locations where sensitive data is stored. By ensuring only trusted users and compliant devices can connect, NAC minimizes the risk of unauthorized access to critical datasets and ensures that data is accessed only by authenticated, authorized entities.
6. Analytics and Intelligence: Modern NAC solutions generate extensive logs and insights on who is accessing the network, which devices are connected, and which segments they’re in. This data feeds into the ZTX framework’s analytics to detect anomalies, unauthorized access attempts, or unusual device behavior, allowing for proactive threat detection and response. NAC can also integrate with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems, enriching the overall security posture by providing valuable data for monitoring and incident response.
7. Automation and Orchestration: NAC solutions can automate responses to detected threats by dynamically adjusting access privileges based on risk levels. For example, if a device shows signs of non-compliance or malicious behavior, NAC can immediately quarantine or limit its access, without needing manual intervention. This automation strengthens the ZTX framework by enabling rapid, real-time enforcement of security policies across the network.
8. User Experience: NAC helps balance security with user experience by applying policies that are both secure and minimally disruptive. With adaptive access controls, NAC can adjust security measures based on context—such as user location, device compliance, or network segment—allowing for secure, frictionless access when appropriate and only restricting access when risk levels increase.

In essence, NAC acts as a foundational enforcement layer within a Zero Trust Extended Framework, handling network-based access control with granularity and precision. By verifying both user identity and device posture and restricting network access to necessary segments, NAC strengthens each component of the ZTX framework, creating a more robust, adaptive, and holistic Zero Trust security posture. This integration of NAC within the ZTX framework allows organizations to protect against a wide range of threats while maintaining flexibility and scalability, especially as enterprises grow and adopt hybrid or remote work models.

What’s the difference between zero trust and ZTX?

The terms Zero Trust and Zero Trust Extended (ZTX) Framework are closely related but represent different scopes within the Zero Trust security model:

1. Zero Trust (Core Concept)

• Definition: Zero Trust is a cybersecurity philosophy and framework that operates on the principle of “never trust, always verify.” It assumes that threats could be inside or outside the network, so no entity (user, device, or application) is automatically trusted to access systems or data.
• Focus: It’s primarily about establishing strong verification measures for access requests, enforcing strict identity, device verification, and implementing continuous monitoring.
• Core Components: Identity verification, access control, device compliance, and least-privilege access are core to Zero Trust. The goal is to ensure that only authenticated, authorized users and secure devices can access resources, typically through:
  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
  • Least-privilege principles
  • Segmentation and micro-segmentation (to limit lateral movement)
  • Endpoint and network security
• Scope: Zero Trust focuses on securing access points and sessions, ensuring that all users and devices are validated continuously.

2. Zero Trust Extended (ZTX) Framework

• Definition: The Zero Trust Extended (ZTX) Framework is a more comprehensive, structured approach developed by Forrester Research to operationalize Zero Trust across an entire organization. It takes Zero Trust principles and applies them beyond identity and access, encompassing every layer of enterprise security.
• Expanded Scope: ZTX Framework extends beyond identity and access control to address security in a more holistic way. It includes components such as:
  • Identity Security: Managing user and device identity and verifying credentials.
  • Device Security: Enforcing device compliance before granting network access.
  • Network Security: Implementing micro-segmentation and secure access across the network.
  • Application Security: Securing application access and protecting data at the application layer.
  • Data Security: Protecting data at rest, in transit, and during processing.
  • Analytics and Intelligence: Using data analytics and real-time monitoring to detect threats and suspicious behavior.
  • Automation and Orchestration: Automating security enforcement and responses to threats, enhancing efficiency and scalability.
  • User Experience: Balancing security controls with usability to minimize disruptions.
• Focus: The ZTX Framework provides a structured approach for implementing Zero Trust across the entire organization, creating a cohesive security architecture that integrates with other security functions.
• Purpose: It’s designed to be a comprehensive model that helps organizations adopt Zero Trust principles across all facets of their IT and security infrastructure, from network access to cloud resources, data handling, and applications.

Summary

Zero Trust is the foundational concept that focuses on securing access and enforcing least-privilege principles, while the Zero Trust Extended (ZTX) Framework takes these principles further, structuring them into a comprehensive, organization-wide approach. The ZTX Framework operationalizes Zero Trust in a broader and more systematic way, encompassing not only identity and access but also network, application, data security, and automated threat detection and response, thus creating a truly resilient security posture.

How can cloud-native security tools better support ZTX?

Cloud-native security tools are well-suited to support a Zero Trust Extended (ZTX) Framework because they are designed for scalability, flexibility, and automation—all essential to implementing Zero Trust across an organization’s cloud and hybrid environments. Here’s how cloud-native security tools enhance each aspect of a ZTX Framework:

1. Scalable Identity Security

• How Cloud-Native Helps: Cloud-native identity and access management (IAM) solutions, like Azure Active Directory, AWS IAM, and Google Cloud Identity, offer centralized, scalable identity management across multiple environments. These tools support adaptive and context-aware access policies, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and single sign-on (SSO), making it easier to enforce and manage identity-based access at scale.
• Example: A cloud-native IAM can dynamically adjust access controls based on user behavior and risk level, verifying identity with continuous, adaptive policies, even in complex multi-cloud and hybrid settings.

2. Enhanced Device Security

• How Cloud-Native Helps: Cloud-native endpoint protection platforms (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions, such as CrowdStrike and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, integrate seamlessly with cloud networks. They provide real-time insights and control over device compliance, monitor endpoint health, and enforce security policies, ensuring only compliant devices can access resources.
• Example: With these tools, organizations can monitor device posture continuously and automate actions (like blocking or quarantining) if a device becomes non-compliant, ensuring adherence to ZTX device security standards.

3. Flexible Network Security (Micro-segmentation)

• How Cloud-Native Helps: Cloud-native platforms like AWS VPC, Google Cloud VPC, and Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks enable fine-grained network segmentation, allowing organizations to enforce micro-segmentation across cloud resources. Additionally, software-defined perimeters (SDP) and secure access service edge (SASE) solutions provide secure, identity-driven access across distributed environments.
• Example: A SASE solution can enforce network micro-segmentation policies based on user identity and device context, regardless of where users are connecting from, supporting ZTX’s principle of least privilege and limiting lateral movement in the network.

4. Comprehensive Application Security

• How Cloud-Native Helps: Cloud-native Web Application Firewalls (WAF), API gateways, and secure development tools like AWS WAF, Azure API Management, and Google Apigee protect applications and APIs in cloud environments. These tools help enforce application-layer security policies, ensuring only trusted users and devices can interact with sensitive applications.
• Example: An API gateway can apply Zero Trust principles by authenticating every application and API request, preventing unauthorized access and reducing the application attack surface.

5. Data Security and Governance

• How Cloud-Native Helps: Cloud-native data protection tools provide encryption, data access controls, and real-time monitoring of data access patterns. Solutions like AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Azure Key Vault, and Google Cloud Key Management allow for secure key storage and management, while tools like Amazon Macie and Microsoft Purview provide automated data classification and monitoring.
• Example: Automated data classification tools can enforce Zero Trust data policies by identifying and securing sensitive data based on context, ensuring that only authorized users with specific roles can access classified data sets.

6. Real-Time Analytics and Intelligence

• How Cloud-Native Helps: Cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions, like Azure Sentinel, AWS Security Hub, and Google Chronicle, centralize data and offer advanced analytics for continuous monitoring, threat detection, and incident response. By leveraging machine learning, these tools can detect anomalous behavior and automatically adjust security policies.
• Example: Using a cloud-native SIEM, organizations can aggregate and analyze data from various sources in real-time, detecting potential threats across the entire ZTX framework and triggering automated responses as needed.

7. Automation and Orchestration

• How Cloud-Native Helps: Cloud-native security tools often come with built-in automation capabilities, including automated response actions, API integrations, and orchestration tools that allow for seamless policy enforcement. Tools like AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Logic Apps enable automated workflows for threat response, compliance, and policy enforcement.
• Example: Automation can rapidly quarantine a compromised device, disable user accounts, or adjust access policies based on real-time risk analysis, supporting the ZTX principle of rapid, adaptive security response.

8. Seamless User Experience

• How Cloud-Native Helps: Cloud-native tools often come with user-friendly, customizable dashboards and interfaces that allow security teams to manage access policies without negatively impacting user experience. They also support single sign-on (SSO) across platforms, enabling secure yet seamless access for users.
• Example: With cloud-native SSO solutions, users can enjoy consistent access across all applications with minimal disruptions, while security teams maintain strict Zero Trust policies in the background.

Summary

Cloud-native security tools provide the flexibility, scalability, and automation that are essential to effectively implementing and managing a ZTX framework. By enabling centralized identity management, real-time device posture checks, granular network segmentation, and robust data protection, these tools can comprehensively enforce Zero Trust principles across cloud and hybrid environments. Their capacity for real-time analytics and automated incident response further supports the proactive, adaptive security required to meet the demands of modern, dynamic security landscapes.