AI and blockchain beyond zero trust

Why Zero Trust Isn’t Enough: Tackling the Threat of “Ambient Authority” in AI Agents

Thu, July 30 2026 /Mpelembe Media/ — The Shift from Zero Trust to “Beyond Zero” The rapid proliferation of autonomous AI agents has fundamentally broken traditional “Zero Trust” architectures, such as Google’s pioneering BeyondCorp. Because AI agents can consume and process data at machine speed, they often inherit the broad, over-provisioned privileges of their human operators—a vulnerability known as “ambient authority”. To address this, Google security researchers introduced “Beyond Zero,” a new security paradigm that shrinks the trust boundary from the broad application level down to the individual resource action.

How the Beyond Zero Architecture Operates Beyond Zero evaluates every transaction in real-time by combining static rules, which act as “the floor,” with dynamic, AI-driven risk assessments that serve as “the ceiling”. The framework relies on a continuous feedback loop powered by several core components. It begins with an Enterprise Security World Model, which is an AI-generated map of the enterprise that understands “Who” (users and hierarchies), “What” (data sensitivity), and “How” (contextual task alignment) to pre-compute access attributes. Next, through its Event Intake fabric, the system avoids evaluating single actions in isolation; instead, it looks at an “Activity Window” of telemetry before and after an event to spot sophisticated anomalies. The architecture also relies on a Hierarchical Reasoning Engine that balances sub-millisecond, deterministic evaluations on a “fast path” with deeper, out-of-band behavioral anomaly detection on a “slow path”. Finally, rather than simply blocking users—which causes administrative fatigue—the system utilizes a Challenge and Containment Infrastructure to introduce localized friction, such as requiring a FIDO security key touch or manager approval when it detects anomalous behavior.

Critiques and Risks of the “Self-Defending Enterprise” While Beyond Zero addresses machine-speed threats, cybersecurity experts warn that it risks creating an “algorithmic bureaucracy”. If an AI engine defines “normal” behavior based strictly on historical data, it may actively penalize employees doing legitimate emergency work, cross-functional tasks, or novel projects. Critics compare this to an immune system suffering from an autoimmune disease, where the enterprise attacks its own healthy workflows. Furthermore, centralizing security decisions into a single AI “brain” creates a massive, high-value target for attackers. If a malicious actor were to successfully compromise this core reasoning engine, they would be granted absolute authority over all enterprise resources.

Alternative and Complementary Security Paradigms Beyond Google’s framework, the industry is exploring several other cutting-edge methods to secure enterprise perimeters. To fix the vulnerability of compromised endpoints in a Zero Trust Architecture, researchers propose blockchain integration to build Distributed Collaborative Intrusion Detection Systems (DCIDS). Blockchain’s immutable ledger ensures that shared security alerts and logs cannot be tampered with by malicious actors. Another paradigm is database-centric security, championed by platforms like AsterionDB, which argues for removing sensitive corporate data from standard file systems entirely and placing it into relational Oracle databases. By eliminating file systems, organizations remove the primary targets for ransomware and protect data against post-quantum “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” attacks, as the data cannot be read without defeating the database’s internal access controls first. Finally, to combat phishing and credential theft, platforms like ThreatLocker utilize device-based zero trust. This approach enforces strict deny-by-default policies that require valid credentials, an approved device, and a secure broker. Under this model, if a user is phished, the attacker still cannot access the network without physical possession of the trusted device.

From Zero Trust to Beyond Zero: Why AI Agents and Blockchain Are the New Frontier of Resource Integrity

For decades, the “castle-and-moat” strategy defined the boundaries of enterprise security. We built formidable walls—firewalls, VPNs, and localized intrusion detection—under the assumption that anything inside the perimeter was inherently benign. This paradigm effectively collapsed following the 2009 “Operation Aurora” attacks, which proved that once an adversary establishes a foothold inside the network, the “moat” becomes irrelevant.The subsequent shift toward Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) was accelerated by the cloud revolution and the remote-work requirements of the COVID-19 era. Yet, as we move into a world of “de-perimeterization,” ZTA is no longer the finish line. We are entering the era of  Beyond Zero , where the focus shifts from merely verifying access to governing the integrity of digital intent at machine speed.

1. Your Endpoints are the “Achilles Heel” of Zero Trust

A common misconception among IT leaders is that a mature ZTA implementation renders a network “unhackable” by preventing lateral movement. However, research from the University of Central Lancashire and Edge Hill University reveals a sobering reality: if the endpoint itself is compromised, the ZTA controller can be systematically deceived.The mechanism is a technique known as “session riding.” In this scenario, an attacker gains a foothold on a device using  kernel-level malware . By compromising the operating system at its most fundamental level, the adversary can forge the health telemetry sent to the ZTA controller. To the security engine, the device appears patched and compliant, while the attacker “rides” the user’s authenticated session to perform malicious acts.”The already authenticated and authorised session of a compromised endpoint can be leveraged to perform limited, though malicious, activities ultimately rendering the endpoints the Achilles heel of ZTA.”This is counter-intuitive for teams who view ZTA as a silver bullet. Because the malware operates within the kernel, it can manipulate the very security checks meant to verify its absence, creating a “trusted” session for an untrusted actor.

2. From Application Access to “Resource-Level” Actions

Google’s original BeyondCorp model revolutionized security by shifting focus from network location to the application layer. But in the AI era, application-level access is a blunt instrument. The new “Beyond Zero” paradigm moves the trust boundary even deeper: from “Can I access this app?” to “Is this specific action on this specific resource authorized?”This granularity is essential for securing  APIs and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) , where traditional boundaries blur. To navigate this, Beyond Zero relies on five core principles:

Resource and Action-based security:  Decisions are evaluated for individual actions on specific resources, applying across interfaces, APIs, and AI protocols.

Blended static and dynamic security:  Granular static policies are paired with dynamic controls. This “blended” approach is strategic; it provides flexibility without moving to a fully dynamic model, which is notoriously difficult to verify statically.

Automatically enriched context:  Systems ingest real-time data on what a user is working on and the nature of the data they are touching.

Automated in-depth investigation:  Risk signals autonomously trigger probes, deploying challenges across the access stream.

Challenges and containments:  Policies can instantly trigger verification requirements or containment protocols to manage exceptions.

3. AI Agents are the New “Users” (And They’re Faster Than You)

The modern enterprise is no longer populated solely by humans. AI agents are the new digital workforce, but they operate at a velocity that renders human-centric security obsolete.Consider the contrast in  machine-speed data access : while a human takes minutes or even hours to browse and exfiltrate a directory, a rogue AI agent can perform the same task in milliseconds. Traditional periodic health checks fail at this speed. This necessitates “agentic identities” and a shift toward  intent-based analysis . By analyzing the “why” behind a request in real time, autonomous reasoning engines can distinguish between a productive agent and a compromised credential before the damage is done.

4. Blockchain is the Secret Sauce for “Trustless” Security Integrity

As ZTA matures, it is converging with Blockchain-based Distributed Collaborative Intrusion Detection Systems (DCIDS). While traditional, standalone IDS setups are often siloed and vulnerable to log tampering, blockchain’s immutability ensures the integrity of the detection process itself.In a “Beyond Zero” framework, blockchain solves the problem of compromised IDS nodes. By using a distributed ledger, the system ensures that security logs cannot be deleted or altered by an adversary who has gained administrative privileges.| Feature | Traditional IDS | Blockchain-enabled DCIDS || —— | —— | —— || Architecture | Standalone or Centralized | Distributed and Peer-to-Peer || Data Integrity | Vulnerable to log tampering | Immutable audit trails || Trust Model | Reliance on central authority | Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) || Knowledge Sharing | Siloed or limited | Collaborative and transparent |

By utilizing PBFT instead of energy-intensive Proof of Work, enterprise-grade blockchain models can reach consensus across distributed nodes rapidly, ensuring that the “collective brain” of the network remains tamper-proof.

5. The “Never Trust, Always Verify” Paradox

Zero Trust is built on a mantra of constant verification, yet it often creates a “false sense of security.” If an organization relies on health checks that can be forged by a compromised kernel, they are essentially trusting a compromised witness.Beyond Zero addresses this paradox by moving beyond static “check-the-box” security. It introduces a dynamic AI-driven reasoning engine that evaluates the risk of an action based on real-time context and behavioral intent. As Google’s security leadership (Heather Adkins and Archana Ramamoorthy) emphasizes:”Beyond Zero is a new security paradigm designed to address these AI-era challenges with a contextual, risk-based, resource-level authorization model to run at machine-speed, securing both humans and agents without overburdening the user experience.”

Conclusion: Beyond the Buzzwords

The fundamental role of cybersecurity is shifting. We are moving away from being static gatekeepers of network entry and toward becoming dynamic, autonomous governors of digital intent.While the Zero Trust era was defined by preventing lateral movement, the “Beyond Zero” era is defined by the integrity of the action itself. As your organization integrates AI agents and faces adversaries operating at machine speeds, the most critical question you can ask is no longer “Who has access?” but rather:  Are we securing the access, or are we securing the intent?