Zero-Trust Technology and Industry Development: Architecture, Key Technologies, Opportunities and Challenges

Zero-trust is a network security architecture built on the principle of “never trust, always verify.” It replaces the traditional assumption that everything inside a network perimeter is trustworthy with continuous verification, dynamic authorization and least-privilege access. This paper presents a structured review based on the IEEE SA Industry Connections Report IC24-08, “Zero-Trust Technology and Industry Development” (Mu and Chai, CAICT). It reorganizes the report’s findings into a review format covering the history and strategic value of zero-trust, the three key industry players (producers, consumers and market managers), the eight key technologies of the overall architecture, and the opportunities and challenges of zero-trust in five scenarios: 5G, Internet of Vehicles, Internet of Things, Industrial Internet and Computing Power Network. The review shows that zero-trust offers strong security benefits in all five scenarios, while cost, processing latency, operational complexity, legacy equipment and cross-domain trust remain the main obstacles. The paper can help students and researchers understand the current landscape of zero-trust and identify areas for further study.