Paper Title
DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A ZERO TRUST ARCHITECTURE FOR SECURING CLOUD-NATIVE MICROSERVICES USING IDENTITY-AWARE ACCESS CONTROL

Abstract
The rapid adoption of cloud-native microservices has transformed enterprise computing by introducing highly distributed and dynamic environments, making traditional perimeter-based security models ineffective. Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), based on continuous verification, has emerged as a suitable alternative; however, its implementation in microservices environments presents challenges such as managing ephemeral identities, securing service-to-service communication, and enforcing consistent access control. This study proposes a Zero Trust framework that integrates identity federation with Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC) to enable identity-aware access decisions across distributed systems. The proposed framework is implemented as a collection of containerized microservices coordinated by Kubernetes. Distributed enforcement of security regulations across services is made possible via an Istio-implemented service mesh. JSON Web Tokens (JWT) combined with OpenID Connect protocols check user and service identities, and specified authorization rules control resource access to ensure safe interactions. Experimental results show that unauthorized requests are effectively blocked, while authenticated requests are successfully processed. The system introduces minimal latency overhead (average 5.8 ms), maintaining scalability and performance. The proposed approach demonstrates that identity-driven Zero Trust enforcement enhances security while preserving system efficiency in cloud-native environments. Keywords - Cloud-Native Microservices, Identity-Aware Access Control, Identity Federation, Kubernetes Security, Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC), Zero Trust Architecture