Zero Trust is an architecture and a sequencing problem, not a product you buy. Cyberneza assesses where you are against a recognized maturity model, agrees a target state that someone can actually be held to, and hands your teams a design and a roadmap ordered by dependency and risk — for federal programs working to OMB M-22-09 and the DoD Zero Trust Strategy, and for commercial teams whose auditors and enterprise customers keep asking the same access-control questions.
CCZT · CISSP · CRISC · CCSK v5 · Cyber AB RP (CPN 76768) | SANS SEC530 | Federal and commercial | Veteran-owned
Zero Trust is a set of design principles: no implicit trust from network location, access decided per request against identity, device posture and context, least privilege enforced continuously, and the assumption that a breach has already happened. Everything else is implementation detail.
Guidance is tied to published sources rather than to a vendor's architecture diagram, so the position you take can be shown to an assessor, an authorizing official, or a customer's security team.
The reference definition of Zero Trust Architecture — tenets, logical components (policy engine, policy administrator, policy enforcement point), deployment variations, and the trust algorithm. This is the vocabulary the rest of the models assume.
Five pillars — Identity, Devices, Networks, Applications & Workloads, Data — plus visibility and analytics, automation and orchestration, and governance across all of them. Its four stages give a per-capability current and target state instead of one subjective score.
The federal Zero Trust strategy memorandum and its specific expectations — enterprise identity with phishing-resistant MFA, a device inventory, encrypted traffic, application testing and internal accessibility, and data categorization. Where federal customers get their questions.
Seven pillars and the target-level capability activities defense programs are being measured against. Relevant to primes and subcontractors whose programme plans now have to state a Zero Trust position.
The same design decisions are mapped to SOC 2 logical-access criteria, ISO/IEC 27001 Annex A access and network controls, and CIS Controls v8 — so one architecture answers the auditor and the enterprise security questionnaire rather than needing a second story.
Neither requires Zero Trust. But the access-control, identification-and-authentication and audit families ask for exactly what a Zero Trust design produces, so the two are sequenced together rather than as competing programmes. See CMMC & NIST 800-171 readiness →
The same four-stage delivery model the rest of the practice uses. See the full methodology →
Assess the current state per pillar against the maturity model that applies to you, using your existing identity, endpoint, network and data tooling as the evidence. The output is a current position with the reasoning attached, not a score.
Agree a target state per capability, and write down what it is deliberately not. A target nobody signed is the reason most Zero Trust programmes cannot say whether they are finished.
Order the work by dependency and risk — identity foundations before conditional access, device signal before device-based policy, inventory before segmentation — so nothing is built twice.
Control design, implementation procedures and validation criteria for the sequenced work, with engineering support through it. Your teams execute production changes through your own change-management process. That is the BUILD package →
Current state per pillar and capability, with the evidence and reasoning behind each placement so the position survives being questioned.
Policy enforcement points, the identity and device signals each decision depends on, and where the boundaries sit — written in the vocabulary of NIST SP 800-207.
The work ordered by dependency and risk, with each step's prerequisite named, so a delay in one place has a visible consequence rather than a silent one.
Each design decision mapped to the framework requirements it satisfies — federal, commercial, or both — so one piece of work answers several questions.
Explicit criteria per capability, so "we have done Zero Trust for identity" becomes a test rather than an opinion.
The position and the plan in language a board, an authorizing official, or a customer's security reviewer can act on without a translation layer.
These are the patterns the published guidance and the vendor case literature keep describing. Naming them early is cheaper than discovering them in year two.
Agencies and programme offices working to OMB M-22-09, and the primes and subcontractors being asked to state a Zero Trust position in a proposal or a programme plan. Sequenced alongside NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC work rather than competing with it.
SaaS and enterprise teams whose access-control design has to satisfy a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit, an enterprise customer's security review, and an insurer's underwriting questions — ideally with one architecture rather than three answers.
No. Remote access is one enforcement point among many, and replacing it is a sequencing decision rather than a prerequisite. Several organizations get more risk reduction earlier from identity and privileged-access work than from changing how people connect.
No. Neither requires Zero Trust. The access-control, identification-and-authentication, and audit requirements do ask for the same underlying capabilities, so the two are planned together to avoid building the same controls twice.
No, and neither can anyone else — there is no Zero Trust certification. What can be produced is a defensible maturity position against a published model, with the evidence behind each placement.
Cyberneza develops the architecture, technical recommendations, implementation procedures, configuration guidance, and validation criteria. Customer technical teams normally execute approved production changes through their established change-management process.
No. Recommendations are tool-agnostic. Partner and platform relationships expand what can be delivered; they do not decide the architecture, and the design is written so it can be implemented with what you already own where that is the right answer.
It is scoped after a call, because the environment, the model you are being measured against, and the amount of engineering support required all change the work. The scope and fee are written down before the engagement begins. See how packages are priced →
Whether it is a contract clause, an agency plan, an auditor, or a stalled rollout, the first conversation is about where you actually are and what the smallest useful next step is.
