[Ne-Trust] Negative Trust Architectures

IT systems are facing an increasing threat from insider perpetrators who often move unnoticed within systems, explore IT structures and cause damage. The increasing awareness of this attack vector is also fueled by the use of artificial intelligence (AI). These current and future challenges do not stop at the gates of administration, defense and security authorities.

In order to be prepared to counter threat situations like these, IT security paradigms are particularly important: They shape how IT systems are fundamentally designed, operated and protected. The most established example is “Zero Trust”. However, as a measure against insider attacks, this approach has its limits.

Key basic works, including the NIST guideline SP 800-207, point out remaining gaps and the need for research. Against this background, there is a need to explore a further developed and novel paradigm for more effective defense against internal perpetrators. The aim of Ne-Trust is therefore to enable demonstrably improved detection and more proactive defense against increasing and changing insider threats for IT systems and thus to further develop beyond Zero Trust.

The program is based on the novel term “Negative Trust”, which is related to Zero Trust, but can be interpreted as a self-sufficient name for its own paradigm. There are initial attempts to conceptually define negative trust, for example in the direction of deception technology. However, a scientific and interdisciplinary examination of the term towards an independent, further developed IT security paradigm has not yet taken place. Ne-Trust addresses precisely this gap and opens up the possibility for a first-time scientific examination and development of Negative-Trust Arch