Zero-Trust Architecture for Cloud-Native Applications on AWS & Azure

Zero-trust is not a product — it's an architectural paradigm. This article covers practical implementation across AWS and Azure.

Zero-Trust Principles

• **Never Trust, Always Verify**: Every request is authenticated and authorized regardless of origin
• **Least Privilege**: Fine-grained IAM with just-in-time access and temporary credentials
• **Microsegmentation**: Network policies at the pod/container level, not just VPC/subnet
• **Continuous Validation**: Certificate-based workload identity with short-lived SPIFFE identities

Implementation Stack

• **Service Mesh**: Istio/Envoy for mTLS, request authentication, and authorization policies
• **Identity-Aware Proxy**: OAuth2/OIDC with device posture assessment
• **Policy-as-Code**: Open Policy Agent (OPA) and Kyverno for Kubernetes-native policy enforcement
• **Secrets Management**: HashiCorp Vault with dynamic secrets and auto-rotation