Discover how integrating Zero Trust principles with a token-based architecture can enhance your security posture and minimize the risk of unauthorized access or data breaches.
Understanding Zero Trust
Zero Trust is a powerful security framework that insists on verifying every actor, regardless of their location or network environment. It’s designed to protect your organization from both internal and external threats, even those within the network perimeter. By continuously verifying and validating identities and enforcing strict access controls, you ensure your applications remain secure.
Applications are prime targets for breaches in any organization. While network security is a key aspect of Zero Trust, your applications need continuous protection too. Token-based architectures, commonly used for API and application access, can be fortified by embedding Zero Trust principles to reduce the attack surface and bolster security. Many organizations have just begun their Zero Trust journey—it’s time to embed these principles deep into your application architecture.
Embedding Zero Trust in Token-Based Architecture
Zero Trust principles can be applied across various systems that use token-based architectures. Tokens represent authorization grants for accessing resources, and token issuers/providers play a critical role in securing these interactions. You might be familiar with tokens generated by OAuth, OIDC, SAML, API Keys, JWT, WS-Fed, and proprietary tokens used across your applications, services, and workloads. Standardizing and unifying your token landscape is crucial for improving visibility, enforcing controls, and managing flow within your application architecture.
In a token-based architecture, the token itself becomes the primary attack surface. It’s common for a token to be used across multiple applications of varying sensitivity. Once inside the system, a single token might grant access to numerous applications. This widespread use increases the attack surface, but you can mitigate this risk by implementing Zero Trust mechanisms. Let’s explore how to apply these principles effectively.
Identity Verification
Every user or entity must be authenticated before receiving a token. For users, this often involves passwords, multi-factor authentication, or biometrics. Once verified, a token is issued. However, identity in a Zero Trust environment extends beyond users to include devices, workloads, services, and applications, all of which must authenticate before accessing resources.
Your token provider should be flexible, able to consume identities from various sources, including external organizations or social platforms. This flexibility allows you to trust identities from outside your network while still enforcing Zero Trust principles.
Token Integrity
After an actor is authenticated, issuing a signed, tamper-proof token is essential. The token provider must act as the authoritative issuer, ensuring tokens are secure and verifiable. This includes supporting symmetrical and asymmetrical algorithms, the ability to revoke signing keys on demand, and mechanisms to verify token authenticity efficiently. Token integrity is critical for maintaining a secure system.
Continuous Verification
Traditional authentication is often a one-time event, but in a Zero Trust token-based architecture, continuous verification is key. Regularly re-validate tokens to ensure ongoing access is legitimate. This can involve time-based expiration, device trust scores, or behavior analysis. Frequent token validation helps protect against attacks on cached tokens, so your provider must support high-performance token validation at scale.
Dynamic Authorization
Zero Trust demands continuous verification of an actor’s authorization token for specific resources. This can be achieved through fine-grained access control and real-time evaluation of user permissions or roles. Modern authorization methods push these capabilities further by issuing tokens that are even more fine-grained, considering the actor, resource, and context.
Layered Defense-In-Depth
Implementing Zero Trust requires layered defenses that limit access to resources at multiple points. You should authorize token requests at the perimeter, edge, and within the workload or application. This multi-layered approach tightens control over traffic flow, reducing the risk of unauthorized access. These defenses should be flexible, allowing for configurable policy-based rules.
Least Privilege
Applying the principle of least privilege to tokens is crucial. Each token should contain only the information and permissions necessary for the specific task or resource access. Tailor the token’s contents based on parameters like the actor, target resource, and context. This approach ensures minimal access is granted, reducing potential risks.
Micro-Segmentation
Micro-segmentation divides your network and resources into smaller, more secure segments. Extend this principle to your applications and services. Each segment should have strictly defined resources, access controls, and policies to limit audience interaction. Only authorized tokens should interact with resources within these segments.
Encryption and Secure Communication
Ensure that tokens are transmitted securely and accessible only to authorized parties. Encrypt sensitive information within tokens, allowing only legitimate parties to decrypt it. Your provider should support mechanisms like mTLS and DPoP to bind tokens to specific applications securely.
Centralized Authorization Provider
A centralized token provider simplifies governance and ensures consistent access control policies across your organization. In cases where your organization is subdivided into LOBs or sub-organizations, independent token providers can operate within each LOB, establishing trust across these providers in a standardized manner.
Monitoring and Analytics
Continuous monitoring of token-based activities is vital in a Zero Trust architecture. Your token provider should communicate detected patterns or events to mitigate potential threats. The ability to stop minting new tokens based on risk data, revoke compromised tokens, and maintain a token block list are essential capabilities for maintaining security.
Eliminating Barriers
Existing investments in legacy identity providers can hinder progress towards modern, Zero Trust-compliant architectures. To overcome these barriers, invest in modern authorization servers that mint tokens with fine-grained contextual awareness, support continuous evaluation, and scale to meet your throughput needs.
Some providers lack the features and performance capabilities needed for a fully Zero Trust-compliant architecture. Ask the right questions to ensure the products you choose won’t force you into less secure application patterns. Consider the following:
- Can you trust identities from external providers?
- Can you bind issued tokens to specific applications?
- Do you support signing key rotation?
- Are secure token exchange mechanisms supported?
- Can you use external data sources to evaluate token issuance criteria?
- Can you finely control token contents based on requested resources, targets, actors, etc.?
- Do you perform external checks before issuing tokens?
- What are your token minting latency and performance capabilities?
Next Steps
By combining token-based architecture with Zero Trust principles, you can create a more secure and resilient system that limits the impact of potential breaches. This approach provides flexibility and scalability, enhancing access control and reducing the attack surface across your applications.
SecureAuth offers the capabilities you need at scale to build a strong Zero Trust foundation, all at a lower cost than most other providers.
Explore SecureAuth’s CIAM Cloud solution, featuring a multi-tenant authorization server as a service. Learn more by booking a personalized demo today.