Zero Trust

The CSA Zero trust Network Pillar workgroup has been enhancing the CSA's suite of Software Defined Perimiter (SDP) research, including adding a Network-Infrastructure Hiding Protocol (NHP) specification that enhances the earlier SDP Single Packet Authorization (SPA) protocol.  This whitepaper presents NHP as a strategic solution for protecting network infrastructures against all threats, with comprehensive technical specifications to support its implementation. Review comments can be added as replies to this post and/or as comments and suggestions in the document itself.

ABSTRACT: Our core TCP/IP networking systems and protocols have been with us since the 1970s, and have in many ways served us well. Their inherent openness and interoperability have sparked incredible innovation and significantly changed our world. However, these systems were designed to facilitate easy connection, rather than to fend off malicious actors. As Vint Cerf, who personally designed many of these components, stated, "We didn't focus on how you could wreck this system intentionally. You could argue with hindsight that we should have, but getting this thing to work at all was non-trivial." [see The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable | The Washington Post]

It should be clear that TCP/IP's default network visibility has enabled much of today's malicious activity. Given our current threat landscape and the widespread adoption of Zero Trust as a set of principles and best practices, we believe that we now have an imperative to pivot our core networking technologies to a default-deny stance. 

The Network-infrastructure Hiding Protocol (NHP) introduces an innovative Zero Trust security approach that significantly reduces the attack surface and prevents unauthorized access before exploitation can occur. NHP builds upon and extends the Single-Packet Authorization (SPA) technology initially outlined in the Cloud Security Alliance Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP) specification, representing the third generation of network hiding technology.

This whitepaper presents NHP as a strategic solution for protecting network infrastructures against all threats, with comprehensive technical specifications to support its implementation. 

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Erik Johnson CCSK, CCSP, CISSP, PMP
Senior Research Analyst
Cloud Security Alliance
[email protected]
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Just had a few questions about missing items that may need to be addressed in the artifact.

What evidence is available to demonstrate the effectiveness of NHP in mitigating cyber threats in real-world scenarios?

How can NHP be effectively integrated with existing security frameworks and protocols such as SDP, DNS security, and FIDO authentication?

What are the scalability and performance characteristics of NHP when deployed in large-scale network environments?

What specific limitations of SPA are addressed by NHP, and how does NHP enhance security for modern cloud-native and distributed environments?

How does NHP proactively mitigate AI-driven zero-day attacks, and what mechanisms are in place to detect and prevent such threats?

What comprehensive logging and auditing capabilities does NHP provide to ensure compliance and effective threat detection?

How is NHP being future-proofed with post-quantum cryptography (PQC) integration to safeguard against emerging quantum-based threats?

• What evidence is available to demonstrate the effectiveness of NHP in mitigating cyber threats in real-world scenarios?  How does NHP proactively mitigate AI-driven zero-day attacks, and what mechanisms are in place to detect and prevent such threats?

Finding and interacting with vulnerable targets is the first step in the attack chain. NHP is effective because it prevents reconnaissance and exploits by making infrastructure undiscoverable to unauthorized entities.

• How can NHP be effectively integrated with existing security frameworks and protocols such as SDP, DNS security, and FIDO authentication?
  

The whitepaper covers how NHP interacts or improves SDP, DNS and FIDO. Is there a specific area that should be clarified?

• What are the scalability and performance characteristics of NHP when deployed in large-scale network environments?

While ultimately scalability and performance characteristics are influenced by implementation choices, NHP's design uses a decoupled architecture. Authentication and access control are separated into distinct components which enables horizontal scaling. Additionally, ensuring the use of efficient cryptographic algorithms is important for performance at scale. 

• What specific limitations of SPA are addressed by NHP, and how does NHP enhance security for modern cloud-native and distributed environments?

One good example around cloud native architectures is that SPA requires static pre-defined access points, which may introduce challenges in the more ephemeral nature of cloud environments. In contrast, NHP supports dynamic access control and adaptive authentication which is better suited for cloud-native solutions. The whitepaper covers a lot more details with a table outlining the various SPA vs. NHP aspects around security, scalability and interoperability. 

• What comprehensive logging and auditing capabilities does NHP provide to ensure compliance and effective threat detection?

NHP provides robust, standards-aligned logging across operational, security, and traffic domains with SIEM integration and IoT-aware logging strategies.

• How is NHP being future-proofed with post-quantum cryptography (PQC) integration to safeguard against emerging quantum-based threats?
  

NHP is future-proofed by planned PQC integration through the use of modular cryptographic frameworks.