Zero Trust deployment for technology pillars

Because your organization might already have elements of Zero Trust protections already in place, this documentation set provides conceptual information to get you started and deployment plans and implementation recommendations for end-to-end adherence to Zero Trust principles. Each article acts as a checklist of deployment objectives with steps and links to more information.

You deploy Zero Trust principles across your IT infrastructure by implementing Zero Trust controls and technologies across seven technology pillars. Six of these pillars are signal sources, a control plane for enforcement, and a critical resource to be defended. The seventh pillar is the pillar that collects signals from the first six pillars and provides visibility for security incidents and automation and orchestration for responding to and mitigating cybersecurity threats.

The following articles provide conceptual information and deployment objectives for these seven technology pillars. Use these articles to assess your readiness and build a deployment plan to apply Zero Trust principles.

Technology pillar	Description
Identities	Identities—whether they represent people, services, or IoT devices—define the Zero Trust control plane. When an identity attempts to access a resource, verify that identity with strong authentication, and ensure access is compliant and typical for that identity. Follow least privilege access principles.
Endpoints	Once an identity has been granted access to a resource, data can flow to a variety of different endpoints (devices), from IoT devices to smartphones, BYOD to partner-managed devices, and on-premises workloads to cloud-hosted servers. This diversity creates a massive attack surface area. Monitor and enforce device health and compliance for secure access.
Data	[Ultimately, security teams are protecting data. Where possible, data should remain safe even if it leaves the devices, apps, infrastructure, and networks the organization controls. Classify, label, and encrypt data, and restrict access based on those attributes.
Apps	Applications and APIs provide the interface by which data is consumed. They may be legacy on-premises workloads, lifted-and-shifted to cloud workloads, or modern SaaS applications. Apply controls and technologies to discover shadow IT, ensure appropriate in-app permissions, gate access based on real-time analytics, monitor for abnormal behavior, control user actions, and validate secure configuration options.
Infrastructure	Infrastructure—whether on-premises servers, cloud-based VMs, containers, or micro-services—represents a critical threat vector. Assess for version, configuration, and JIT access to harden defense. Use telemetry to detect attacks and anomalies, and automatically block and flag risky behavior and take protective actions.
Network	All data is ultimately accessed over network infrastructure. Networking controls can provide critical controls to enhance visibility and help prevent attackers from moving laterally across the network. Segment networks (and do deeper in-network micro-segmentation) and deploy real-time threat protection, end-to-end encryption, monitoring, and analytics.
Visibility, automation, and orchestration	In our Zero Trust guides, we define the approach to implement an end-to-end Zero Trust methodology across identities, endpoints (devices), data, apps, infrastructure, and network. These activities increase your visibility, which gives you better data for making trust decisions. With each of these individual areas generating their own relevant alerts, we need an integrated capability to manage the resulting influx of data to better defend against threats and validate trust in a transaction.

Documentation set

Follow this table for the best Zero Trust documentation sets for your needs.

Documentation set	Helps you...	Roles
Adoption framework for phase and step guidance for key business solutions and outcomes	Apply Zero Trust protections from the C-suite to the IT implementation.	Security architects, IT teams, and project managers
Assessment and progress tracking resource	Assess your infrastructure's readiness and track your progress.	Security architects, IT teams, and project managers
Zero Trust partner kit	Co-branded tracking resources, workshop, and architecture illustrations	Partners and security architects
Deployment for technology pillars for conceptual information and deployment objectives	Apply Zero Trust protections aligned with typical IT technology areas.	IT teams and security staff
Zero Trust for small businesses	Apply Zero Trust principles to small business customers.	Customers and partners working with Microsoft 365 for business
Zero Trust for Microsoft Copilots for stepped and detailed design and deployment guidance	Apply Zero Trust protections to Microsoft Copilots.	IT teams and security staff
Zero Trust deployment plan with Microsoft 365 for stepped and detailed design and deployment guidance	Apply Zero Trust protections to your Microsoft 365 organization.	IT teams and security staff
Incident response with XDR and integrated SIEM	Set XDR tools and integrate these with Microsoft Sentinel	IT teams and security staff
Zero Trust for Azure services for stepped and detailed design and deployment guidance	Apply Zero Trust protections to Azure workloads and services.	IT teams and security staff
Partner integration with Zero Trust for design guidance for technology areas and specializations	Apply Zero Trust protections to partner Microsoft cloud solutions.	Partner developers, IT teams, and security staff
Develop using Zero Trust principles for application development design guidance and best practices	Apply Zero Trust protections to your application.	Application developers
US Government guidance for CISA, DoD, and the Memorandum for Zero Trust architecture	Prescriptive recommendations for US Government requirements	IT Architects and IT teams

Recommended training

Training	Establish the guiding principles and core components of Zero Trust
	Use this learning path to understand the basics of applying Zero Trust principles to the key technology pillars of identities, endpoints, application access, networks, infrastructure, and data.

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