What are the 7 pillars of zero trust?

A guide to understanding the seven zero trust pillars and how SMBs can apply them to build strong, scalable security without an enterprise-sized IT team.

Key Takeaways

The zero trust framework has seven key pillars. Each one helps secure a different part of your environment through continuous verification.
Real-time monitoring and automated responses help organizations act quickly, reduce manual workloads, and stay ahead of evolving threats.
With today’s cloud-based tools, you can start small, beginning with user verification and device trust, and build toward full zero trust without added complexity.

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Why SMBs need to implement zero trust security

Implicit trust is one of the biggest cybersecurity mistakes organizations make, and attackers won’t hesitate to exploit it. A single stolen credential, compromised device, or overlooked policy is all it takes to trigger a breach.

Zero trust is an identity-first security framework built on a core principle: never trust, always verify.

Instead of assuming users or devices are safe just because they’re inside the network, zero trust security treats every access request as suspicious until proven otherwise. That means constant validation, whether someone is working from the office, their living room, or from a café’s Wi-Fi hotspot.

Zero trust is the successor to the outdated perimeter-based model, which relied on firewalls and network boundaries to keep threats out. In today’s world of cloud apps, hybrid work, and roaming devices, those boundaries have become less reliable.

The good news is that zero trust is no longer exclusive to massive enterprises with massive IT teams. Thanks to modern, cloud-native tools, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) can implement zero trust policies without complexity or overhead.

Read through the seven foundational zero trust pillars (as defined by NIST 800-207 and the U.S. Department of Defense) and discover how they work together to protect your people, devices, data, and systems.

The basic tenets of zero trust

While the zero trust pillars define what gets secured, these core principles guide how security decisions are made across your organization.

These principles are especially important for SMBs with lean IT teams who need a strong framework to stay ahead of risk.

Whether you're applying controls to users, devices, data, or workloads, these principles always stay the same:

Always assume a hostile environment

Nothing is inherently safe—not your network, not your endpoints, not even your users.

Presume a breach

Design systems as if something has already gone wrong.

Never trust, always verify

Every access request must be validated every time.

Scrutinize explicitly

Use context like location, device posture, and role information to make access decisions.

Apply unified analytics

Correlate signals across tools and systems to make smarter, faster calls.

For growing businesses, these tenets offer a way to stay secure without slowing down, meeting risk head-on with smarter and more flexible control.

What are the 7 zero trust pillars?

Zero trust isn’t one-size-fits-all, but the zero trust pillars apply to businesses of every size. For SMBs, it offers a practical approach to cybersecurity that doesn’t require a large team or complex infrastructure.

At the heart of the zero trust framework are seven pillars. Each focuses on a different area of your environment and works to keep it verified and controlled.

This is a description of how each zero trust pillar works and how they help keep your organization secure:

Pillar #1. Users

People are at the center of your business, which also makes them a potential source of risk. Even legitimate users can open the door to trouble through stolen credentials and phishing attacks.

The User pillar focuses on continuously verifying who’s trying to access your systems and what they’re allowed to do once they’re in.

The core components of the User pillar focus on verifying identity and controlling what each person can access:

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Define unique user identities with role-based permissions across apps and systems.

Learn more

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Add a second line of defense (like a push notification or biometrics) so stolen passwords alone don’t grant access.

Learn more

Privileged Access Management (PAM)

Limit access to sensitive areas (not everyone needs admin keys to the kingdom).

Learn more

The goal here is simple: make sure every login is intentional, secure, and scoped to what the user needs to do.

Duo delivers secure user authentication and SSO integration to protect access to every app without slowing down your team.

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Pillar #2: Devices

A verified user on an untrusted device is still a risk. The Devices pillar ensures every device accessing your systems meets your security standards.

To do that, you need real-time insight into device health, updates, and overall posture so you can block out-of-date, jailbroken, or unknown endpoints before they become a problem.

To enforce device trust, organizations rely on tools that ensure only secure, compliant devices can access their systems:

Change Management Platforms

Track system updates and catch risky configurations early on.

Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Apply security policies across all enrolled devices and remotely wipe lost or stolen hardware.

Trusted Platform Module (TPM)

Use built-in hardware security to validate device integrity from the boot process onward.

Unsecured or out-of-date devices are a common weak spot in any network, and without proper visibility, they can be easy to miss.

Duo helps enforce device trust by applying context-aware access policies that check health and posture in real time before granting access.

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Pillar #3: Network & Environment

Access shouldn’t come with a hall pass to your entire network. The Network & Environment pillar ensures users and devices can only reach what they genuinely need, and nothing more.

Zero trust assumes the network is already compromised, so access must be earned, restricted, and monitored at every step.

The key components of the Network & Environment pillar focus on restricting and monitoring access so users and devices only reach what’s necessary:

Granular Access Permissions

Set tight, role-based rules for who can access specific apps, services, or subnets and when.

Fine-Grained Policy Controls

Adjust access dynamically based on factors like location, device trust level, or time of day.

Network Segmentation Rules

Divide your environment into smaller, contained zones to limit movement and isolate critical systems.

With these controls in place, your network becomes a collection of well-defined zones, not a wide-open space. That means users stay in their lane, and threats have a much harder time moving around.

Pillar #4: Applications & Workloads

Behind every login is a flurry of apps, workloads, containers, and compute processes that keep your business running. The Applications & Workloads pillar ensures those background systems are just as protected as the front-facing ones.

Zero trust doesn’t just look at who is making a request; it also evaluates what is being accessed, how it's deployed, and whether it should be running at all.

Key practices for securing applications and workloads include:

Proxies

Route and inspect traffic to and from apps in real time, enforcing policies at the application layer.

Zero Trust Enforcement Points

Place checkpoints that verify every request before it interacts with workloads.

DevSecOps Strategies

Integrate security throughout your development pipeline.

Container & VM Security

Monitor and manage virtual machines, containers, and microservices with tight controls.

When your workloads are locked down, your infrastructure becomes far less appealing to cybercriminals and far more difficult to exploit.

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Pillar #5: Data

Your data is what makes your business run. Customer information, IP, financials, internal tools—all of it is a target.

Zero trust follows data across every layer, making sure only the right people (and processes) can access it.

The key tools for protecting data within a zero trust framework include:

Encryption

Protect data in transit and at rest using strong, up-to-date encryption standards.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Control how data is accessed and used even after it leaves your systems.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Monitor and block risky behavior, like unauthorized downloads or transfers.

Granular Classification Policies

Tag sensitive data to apply the proper rules based on type or context automatically.

Strong data protection reduces risk, limits potential fallout, and gives your team greater confidence across the board.

With the right tools in place, even lean teams can protect sensitive data like seasoned security professionals.

Pillar #6: Visibility & Analytics

You can’t stop what you can’t see. The Visibility & Analytics pillar focuses on collecting and analyzing data from across your environment so you can spot suspicious behavior early and act before it becomes a real problem.

The key components of the Visibility & Analytics pillar focus on gathering and analyzing signals from every corner of your environment:

Network & System Logs

Capture activity across systems to understand what’s happening and who’s doing it.

Threat Intelligence Feeds

Stay ahead of emerging threats with real-time updates on known risks.

Sensor Data

Pull in signals from endpoints and connected devices to track trends and anomalies.

Packet Inspection

Dive deep into network traffic to catch stealthy behavior before it spreads.

Centralized visibility gives you the upper hand, so you can act early, respond faster, and stay ahead of threats.

Duo builds on this by applying risk-based, adaptive access controls that tie visibility directly into action, so your organization can respond instantly without manual intervention.

Pillar #7: Automation & Orchestration

When threats move quickly, a manual response isn’t enough. The Automation & Orchestration pillar is all about automating your security processes so you can act instantly, consistently, and at scale, even with a smaller IT team.

The Automation & Orchestration pillar comes to life through elements that remove delays, reduce human error, and scale protection instantly:

SIEM + SOAR Integration

Detect threats and respond in real time using automated workflows.

Automated Detection & Response

Flag risky behavior and kick off actions like locking accounts or quarantining devices without human delay.

Process-Driven Enforcement

Build repeatable, policy-based responses that don’t depend on guesswork or availability.

For SMBs, automation can be a force multiplier, offering enterprise-grade protection without needing an enterprise-sized team.

Implement a zero trust foundation with Cisco Duo

Implementing zero trust doesn’t require a cybersecurity program that’s bigger than your business. With the right tools, SMBs can roll out zero trust controls in ways that are practical, scalable, and relatively simple to manage.

Cisco Duo offers a strong foundation for zero trust, built specifically for teams that need to do more with less. Its cloud-based platform supports key zero trust strategies right out of the box without overwhelming your IT resources.

Duo may be just one part of the larger zero trust equation, but for many SMBs, it’s the best first step.

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