> INTERACTIVE WIZARD // V1.0
Zero-Trust Posture & Sizer Wizard
CISA ZTMM 2.0 Maturity Assessment, Blast Radius Containment & 3-Tier Hardening Roadmap
Zero-Trust Architecture Posture Evaluator
Microsegmentation & workload attestation restrict adversary lateral movement upon single-pod breach.
SPIFFE/SPIRE Cryptographic Workload Attestation
Hardware and kernel-verified workload identity issuance using SPIFFE IDs and short-lived X.509 SVIDs, establishing mutual TLS between microservices with zero static credentials.
CISA 5-Pillar Maturity Breakdown
Critical Attack Vectors & Architecture Gaps
- •Vulnerable to adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing and SIM-swap authentication bypass.
- •Flat internal network allows unrestricted lateral movement once edge VPN is compromised (MITRE T1021).
- •Static encryption keys stored in config maps or environment variables risk total database exfiltration upon memory dump.
- •Statutory compliance audit (SOC2) requires cryptographic audit trails for all data reads.
3-Tier Zero-Trust Hardening Roadmap
Tier 1: Minimal Immediate Hardening
Day 1 – 30 (Zero Production Downtime)- Enforce FIDO2/WebAuthn hardware keys on all IAM consoles and privileged access.
- Migrate CI/CD pipelines to OIDC workload federation, purging static AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID secrets.
- Enforce read-only root filesystems and non-root users across all container deployments.
Recommended Core Open-Source Tooling
Kernel-level eBPF networking, L3-L7 policy enforcement, and WireGuard encryption.
Decentralized cryptographic workload attestation with ephemeral X.509 SVIDs.
In-kernel security observability and real-time execution prevention.
Dynamic secrets leasing, KMS envelope encryption, and ephemeral PKI CA.
Keyless cryptographic container signing and SLSA supply chain verification.
Immediate CLI Hardening Playbooks
cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: "cilium.io/v2"
kind: CiliumNetworkPolicy
metadata:
name: default-deny-all
namespace: production
spec:
endpointSelector: {}
ingress: []
egress:
- toEndpoints:
- matchLabels:
"k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace": kube-system
"k8s:k8s-app": kube-dns
toPorts:
- ports:
- port: "53"
protocol: UDP
EOFcosign verify \ --certificate-identity "https://github.com/tiny-cto/tinycto-tv/.github/workflows/docker-build.yml@refs/heads/main" \ --certificate-oidc-issuer "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com" \ ghcr.io/tiny-cto/tinycto-tv:latest
kubectl exec -n spire spire-agent-0 -c spire-agent -- \ spire-agent api fetch x509 -write /tmp/svids/ \ && openssl x509 -in /tmp/svids/svid.0.pem -text -noout | grep -E "Subject:|Validity|URI:"
Canonical Zero-Trust Defense per NIST SP 800-207 & CISA ZTMM 2.0: Eliminate static credentials, enforce eBPF microsegmentation, and preempt threats with in-kernel runtime telemetry.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core philosophical difference between traditional perimeter defense and Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA)?
Traditional perimeter security relies on the "castle-and-moat" paradigm: once a user or machine crosses the network boundary (e.g. via VPN), they are implicitly trusted with wide lateral network access. Zero-Trust Architecture (NIST SP 800-207) asserts "Never Trust, Always Verify, Assume Breach". Every request—whether originating from outside the organization or inside a private Kubernetes cluster—must be dynamically authenticated, authorized, and cryptographically verified based on contextual signals.
How does NIST SP 800-207 define Policy Decision Points (PDP) and Policy Enforcement Points (PEP)?
Under NIST SP 800-207, the Policy Decision Point (PDP) is the logical brain comprising the Policy Engine (which evaluates continuous enterprise access rules) and the Policy Administrator (which issues or revokes access credentials). The Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) is the gatekeeper (e.g. an Envoy proxy, API gateway, or eBPF kernel hook) that intercepts traffic and strictly permits or terminates connections as instructed by the PDP.
Why are static long-lived credentials (API keys, passwords) considered a critical Zero-Trust anti-pattern?
Static credentials lack contextual temporal binding. Once leaked (via GitHub commit, compromised developer workstation, or CI log), an attacker can exploit them indefinitely from any location without triggering traditional perimeter alarms. Modern Zero-Trust mandates ephemeral credentials (TTL < 1 hour) issued via short-lived OpenID Connect (OIDC) federation, SPIFFE/SPIRE mutual TLS certificates, or hardware-bound FIDO2/WebAuthn passkeys.
How does kernel-level eBPF (Cilium/Tetragon) improve upon legacy iptables for microsegmentation?
Legacy iptables scales linearly O(N), causing severe CPU overhead and latency degradation when clusters scale to thousands of pods and network rules. Furthermore, iptables operates blindly on IP addresses and ports without application context. Cilium eBPF replaces iptables with in-kernel BPF hash maps operating in constant O(1) time, enabling cryptographic identity-based filtering, L7 protocol inspection (HTTP/gRPC/Kafka), and automated in-kernel process termination (SIGKILL) without user-space context switches.
What is SPIFFE/SPIRE and how does it establish workload attestation without secrets?
SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone) is a CNCF open standard defining uniform, cryptographic identity strings (SPIFFE IDs) for workloads. SPIRE is its reference implementation. A local SPIRE Agent inspects the Linux kernel (/proc) and container runtime to attest workload attributes (container image SHA, namespace, service account) without the workload ever possessing a private key. It dynamically injects an ephemeral X.509 SVID into the workload's memory via the SPIFFE Workload API.
What is SLSA Level 3 and why is keyless signing via Sigstore Cosign critical for software supply chains?
SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts) Level 3 certifies that source code was built in an isolated, hermetic, and verifiable build platform where intermediate inputs cannot be tampered with. Sigstore Cosign keyless signing uses short-lived OpenID Connect tokens from the CI runner (GitHub Actions / GitLab CI) and Fulcio Certificate Authority to sign artifacts, recording the cryptographic proof permanently in the public Rekor transparency log without developers needing to manage or store private keys.