A robust zero trust ecosystem should address three critical layers of network resilience: access control, workload segmentation and policy governance. However, deploying solutions individually can leave visibility gaps. The ideal solution is to combine and integrate them.
This was according to speakers at ITWeb Security Summit 2026, who outlined how organisations could move beyond basic zero trust to more robust resilience.
Sean Glansbeek, CEO of IT security distributor Private Protocol Group; Tony Price, regional sales director for EMEA at AppGate; Mohamed Amr, senior engineer for META at Illumio; and Ruby Khaira, VP for META at FireMon outlined the "triad of trust" – three complementary and integrated technologies to make zero trust more robust.
They outlined a unified blueprint for modern defence in which exposure reduction, containment and continuous policy assurance are integrated.
Combining and integrating AppGate’s direct-routed zero trust network access (ZTNA) for access control, Illumio’s advanced workload segmentation for breach containment, and FireMon’s centralised policy governance and management layer creates an automated, self-defending ecosystem, Glansbeek said.
“All three components are highly important in any security strategy, and even more so as organisations increasingly adopt AI. We have brought the most important components of zero trust together to offer organisations the highest security model they can buy, which is built to handle the demands of AI.”
Direct-routed ZTNA for less latency, greater security
Price said the integration offered a more rounded solution that closed visibility gaps and improved resilience. “AppGate is a direct-routed ZTNA. This means that unlike most cloud-routed access control, we sit within a customer’s infrastructure – on-premises or in their private cloud. Their data stays within their infrastructure, is always available and there are no latency issues."
He said most cloud-routed solutions are a bottleneck because they are not always available. "Those clouds go down on average four hours every few days, with some going down more than twice a day. This means users cannot get access and work comes to a standstill.”
Price said AppGate was eight to 10 times faster than a cloud service, enhancing productivity. He also highlighted AppGate’s cloaked technology, which he said makes it impossible for hackers to find.
Breach containment through segmentation
Amr said prevention is not always successful, but containing an attack is crucial. “Organisations often design their infrastructure around multiple VLANs, each with 20 or 30 servers. This creates a big blast radius in the event of an attack. We take a blended approach between business and security, so we follow the customer's business requirements but add additional security layers to ensure that critical applications can’t be touched.”
Described as the world's first breach containment platform, Illumio is powered by an AI security graph and built for zero trust.
Policy management
Khaira said that where a lot of technology best practice breaks down is in how organisations manage policies and configurations in the infrastructure. Policy management can fall short for several reasons, he explained.
“Organisations might build infrastructure in silos, each with their own policies and access controls. These silos might clash, or there may not be enough governance across them. Over time, this can lead to ‘policy bloat’ across the network and misconfiguration across devices."
He said that as part of an overall zero trust strategy, organisations must ensure that access control is consistent with how they want to manage risk.
Khaira explained that FireMon helps companies better understand their network configurations and policies, ensures a high level of hygiene, identifies gaps and flags overly permissive and redundant rules to ensure consistency and support real-time compliance.
Share
