A zero trust security approach with FIDO2

Abstract Common IT infrastructures are built with a perimeter firewall, that separates the internal from the external network environment. Systems within the internal network are considered as trusted by conventional security architectures, while everything outside is considered hostile. However, the IT Security threats within our modern IT environments are often targeting end devices, with attack vectors such as phishing. The consequences from this mismatch between security architecture and threat landscape, become apparent with the increasing number of infrastructures that are getting completely devastated by low level malware such as common ransomware. Modern security requirements demand an IT architecture, that mitigates the risk from compromised end devices. The zero trust architecture is an approach to solve this problem and relieve the conventional perimeter security architecture. This paper will present an approach for a new security architecture that uses modern zero trust solutions to mitigate the risks from common security threats and increase the usability at the same time by replacing passwords as authentication method with the FIDO2 Web Authentication standard.