Question

A financial services firm is redesigning its internal network after a breach where an attacker moved laterally from a compromised marketing workstation to reach database servers holding customer records. The CISO mandates a zero trust architecture. Which design decision most directly embodies the core zero trust principle needed to prevent this lateral movement?

Accepted Answer

Enforce per-session authentication and authorization for every resource request, with default-deny microsegmentation between workloads regardless of network location

Answer

Deploy a hardened perimeter firewall with deep packet inspection at the network edge to block malicious inbound traffic

Answer

Require all employees to connect through a VPN so that internal traffic is encrypted end to end

Answer

Increase the frequency of vulnerability scans and patch cycles on all internal servers to reduce exploitable weaknesses