Zero Trust Architecture Orchestration Explained
This Department of Defense Zero Trust Reference Architecture Version 2.0 diagram illustrates the concept of Centralized Orchestration and Policy Management within a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) context, specifically detailing how various components and orchestrators interact to manage cybersecurity policies and enforce identity and access controls.
I break down the various functions in the section below to make it easier to understand.
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Summary of the Critical Elements and Their Interactions:
Global Orchestrator: This component oversees the entire orchestration process, ensuring that cybersecurity policy and configuration commands are executed according to the desired/target state. It decomposes and coordinates policy and commands across the system.
Other Service Orchestrators: They work alongside the global orchestrator to handle specific service orchestration tasks, such as function calls and configuration related to Zero Touch Provisioning requests.
Cybersecurity Domain Orchestrator: Acts as the central controller for cybersecurity, receiving policy and configuration commands and orchestrating the application of these commands across different cybersecurity domains.
Policy Engine: Works in conjunction with the Cybersecurity Domain Orchestrator to process policy and configuration commands.
Cybersecurity Domain Controller: This is the executive part of the domain that enforces authentication and provisioning commands and controls macro and micro-segmentation processes.
Identity Provider and Identity Service: These components are responsible for handling the authentication and authorization commands for users, establishing their identity, and determining access permissions.
Data, Workload, and Agents: The data and workloads are tagged and controlled, while agents on devices establish secure sessions using IPsec or TLS tunnels to enforce session policies.
Micro and Macro Segmentation: Micro-segmentation involves defining access controls at a granular level within a cybersecurity domain, while macro-segmentation deals with broader network virtualization and establishing connections for larger network domains.
End-to-End (E2E) Coordinated Policy Enforcement Points (PEPs): These are specific points where policy decisions are enforced, ensuring that only authenticated and authorized users or systems can access network resources. They are depicted on the edge of the network and at various points within the network, indicating their role in securing both the perimeter and internal traffic.
Virtual WAN: This defines the network domain and includes aspects such as network virtualization, often in the context of a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN).
The diagram’s dotted lines and arrows indicate the flow of commands and policies and the process of establishing authorizations and sessions. It is a high-level representation of how different components in a Zero Trust Architecture communicate and work together to enhance an organization’s cybersecurity posture.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/timlaytoncyber/
