A SMART ZERO TRUST SECURITY FRAMEWORK TAILORED FOR MODERN SMES: A REVIEW PAPER

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face in- creasingly sophisticated cyberattacks due to inadequate security infrastructure, limited budgets, and lack of cybersecurity exper- tise. Traditional perimeter-based security models are inadequate for the era of cloud computing, remote working, and BYOD. A new security paradigm that has promise through zero trust architecture (ZTA) which operates under the principle of never trust, always verify has proven to be effective. It is a review of the existing Zero Trust models, their applicability to an SME and the challenges related to adopting it. In addition, it addresses how smart and automated Zero Trust tools, including AI-driven policy and behavioral controls have emerged in recent years. As per the literature reviewed, the paper represents the need to develop the Zero Trust framework that is affordable, scalable, and easy to deploy and specifically oriented to the SMEs. The paper reveals the major gaps in the research and proposes further research opportunities in developing practical Zero Trust solutions that will be accessible to resource-strained organizations.