Quick Reference and Further Reading

Zero Trust Terminology

Term	Definition
ABAC	Attribute-Based Access Control: permissions based on dynamic attributes
IdP	Identity Provider: the authoritative source of user identity
mTLS	Mutual TLS: both client and server authenticate with certificates
PAM	Privileged Access Management: special controls for admin accounts
PAP	Policy Administration Point: where security policies are created and managed
PDP	Policy Decision Point: evaluates access requests and issues allow or deny decisions
PEP	Policy Enforcement Point: enforces PDP decisions at the resource boundary
RBAC	Role-Based Access Control: permissions assigned by role
SIEM	Security Information and Event Management: event aggregation and analysis
SOAR	Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response: automated incident handling
SPIFFE	Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone: a workload identity standard
UEBA	User and Entity Behavior Analytics: behavioral anomaly detection
ZTNA	Zero Trust Network Access: application-specific access that replaces VPN

Standards and Frameworks

• NIST SP 800-207, Zero Trust Architecture (August 2020): the tenets, the logical components and the deployment models.
• NIST SP 1800-35, Implementing a Zero Trust Architecture (June 2025): 19 example implementations built with 24 collaborators, mapped to the NIST CSF and SP 800-53r5.
• CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model, version 2.0 (April 2023): five pillars, three cross-cutting capabilities and four maturity stages.
• OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications: the risk list behind Chapter 3's agent controls, starting with prompt injection.

Zero Trust Series on guptadeepak.com

These articles provide the full technical detail behind each chapter of this playbook:

• What Is Zero Trust Security? A Plain-English Guide
• Zero Trust Architecture: The Technical Blueprint
• Zero Trust in the Age of AI: Why the Classic Model Isn't Enough Anymore
• Zero Trust Authorization for Multi-Agent Systems
• Zero Trust Implementation Roadmap: 5 Stages from Legacy to Modern Security
• Zero Trust for B2B SaaS: What Every Founder and CTO Needs to Know

Related Research

• Building Enterprise Cybersecurity: A Strategic Guide for B2B SaaS
• Passkeys at Scale: The Complete Enterprise Deployment Playbook
• CIAM 101: A Practical Guide to Customer Identity and Access Management
• Enterprise Identity: Why Companies Get SSO and RBAC Wrong
• Zero Trust rollout guide on Start with Identity, the non-profit identity community I run: a staged plan that starts with SSO, MFA and conditional access before replacing VPN with ZTNA

Cybersecurity Buyer's Guides

• Top IAM Solutions: 21 Platforms Compared
• Top 10 Privileged Access Management (PAM) Solutions
• Top 5 SIEM Tools of 2026
• Top 10 Penetration Testing Tools
• Identity Map: a directory of identity vendors, including non-human and agent identity.
• Start with Identity zero trust vendors: ZTNA and zero trust access vendors scored on a published 10-dimension rubric.

About the Author

Deepak Gupta founded LoginRadius in 2013 and scaled it into a customer identity and access management (CIAM) platform serving more than 1 billion users. In 2024 he started GrackerAI, which works on Generative Engine Optimization for B2B cybersecurity vendors. He is a former CISO who has led SOC 2, ISO, GDPR and CCPA audits.

He holds five granted patents, including work on DDoS defense, IoT authentication and searchable encryption, and has written six books. He also runs two communities, Start with Identity and LogicBalls.