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Paper short abstract

Zero Trust redefines cybersecurity through continuous verification and default suspicion. Rather than protecting a fixed perimeter, it governs access through pervasive monitoring, reshaping trust, inclusion, and exclusion as unstable and continuously recalculated conditions.

Paper long abstract

For a long time, information security was organised through a spatial logic of inclusion and exclusion. Perimeter-based architectures drew a boundary between a secure “inside” and a threatening “outside,” granting trust by default to internal users and devices. In this framework, trust was not an affective or moral quality, but an architectural assumption tied to position within the system. As digital infrastructures became more complex, however, this model was increasingly challenged. The rise of Zero Trust (ZT) marks a decisive shift: no user, device, or connection is ever trusted in advance, and every interaction becomes a site of continuous verification.

This paper analyses ZT as a paradigmatic case of hostility by design. Drawing on critical approaches in Science and Technology Studies and a historical analysis of cybersecurity rationalities, we argue that ZT does not simply enhance security; it redefines inclusion and exclusion through pervasive, granular, and continuous monitoring. Access to network resources becomes conditional on the ongoing evaluation of identities, behaviours, devices, and contextual signals, while suspicion is institutionalised as a default design principle.

By shifting trust from a stable architectural attribute to a volatile and continuously recalculated variable, ZT turns surveillance into an ordinary condition of digital participation. It thus reveals a broader post-trust rationality in which security is pursued not by stabilising trusted relations, but by continuously managing their fragility. The paper concludes that ZT invites us to rethink hostile technologies as infrastructures that operationalise suspicion and reshape the conditions of access, legitimacy, and belonging.