Zero Trust Policy Management (ZTPM) is an essential component of Zero Trust architecture, which has gained popularity in recent years as a security model that trusts no user or device by default. With the proliferation of data breaches and cyber attacks, organizations are seeking to adopt a Zero Trust approach to secure their sensitive data and critical assets. However, implementing Zero Trust is not a one-time process, but a continuous journey that requires effective policy management. In this blog post, we will discuss the importance of ZTPM and how it is crucial to take a data-centric approach to achieve effective Zero Trust policy management.

In a Zero Trust environment, security policies should be based on the principle of least privilege, where users and devices are only granted access to the resources they need to perform their duties. ZTPM involves defining and enforcing policies that ensure access to sensitive data and critical systems is only granted to authorized users and devices. ZTPM includes the creation, enforcement, and continuous monitoring of access policies, as well as the management of identity and access management (IAM) systems. Effective ZTPM helps organizations to prevent unauthorized access, detect potential security incidents, and respond quickly to security events.

Ensuring appropriate access for employees has become an increasingly difficult challenge and is now seen as one of the largest issues in technology audits, insider threat and cyber risk prevention, and compliance adherence. Previously authorization was handled manually by administrators, however, this isn’t efficient and is error prone.

This creates a need for runtime authorization, where authorization decisions are made in real-time when the user is accessing an application or data. By evaluating the decision at runtime, when an increased amount of information about the user and their actions is available, it allows more fine-grained decisions to be made. Because of this, runtime authorization has become a focal point for developing the next generation of identity-centric access controls. This includes both human and non-human use cases, which can support the high volume and velocity of access to modern apps, computing units, data objects, and underlying networks. 

Runtime authorization systems require an architectural view of the end-to-end access path. This path spans from the authenticated subject of the target object, considering all tiers, intended actions and computing environment requirements. Each authorization control in this path requires a set of policy management capabilities to define and maintain what policies should be enforced, while also supporting runtime services to evaluate and enforce the policies in real time.