Kindervag book charts Zero Trust resilience in AI era

Illumio has released a new book by Zero Trust creator John Kindervag on cyber resilience in the AI era. The book includes contributions from several cybersecurity specialists.

Cyber Resilience at Machine Speed: The Zero Trust Model for the AI Era examines how Zero Trust principles should be applied as artificial intelligence changes how attacks are launched, identities operate and trust decisions are made inside organisations. It follows a five-step Zero Trust model and focuses on breach containment, segmentation, least privilege and verification.

The publication comes as governments and companies place greater emphasis on limiting the impact of cyber intrusions rather than relying only on prevention. In Australia, the Australian Signals Directorate has increasingly positioned Zero Trust within its Modern Defensible Architecture guidance and highlighted segmentation as a basic control for restricting lateral movement after a breach.

Kindervag is one of the best-known figures associated with Zero Trust and has held senior roles at Palo Alto Networks and Forrester Research. He also served on the former President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and was a primary author of the Zero Trust report delivered to the Biden Administration.

Contributors

The book brings together chapters from practitioners and advisers who have worked on Zero Trust frameworks, government security programs and cloud security initiatives. Contributors include Dr. Chase Cunningham, George Finney, Jason Garbis, Jonathan Flack, Lieuwe Jan Koning, Rich Mogull, Michelle Savage, Don Yeske, Josh Woodruff, Tony Scott and Clint Bruce.

The text addresses the security implications of AI systems, agentic systems and non-human identities. It also outlines practical measures to help organisations define critical assets, translate business requirements into security policy and contain the spread of attacks within networks and systems.

The book is framed around the view that the central challenge for defenders has not changed, even as attack methods become more automated. The focus remains on reducing the impact of breaches and stopping attackers from moving easily across an environment.

That position reflects a broader industry shift towards resilience, especially as security teams prepare for more automated threats and more complex digital estates spanning on-premise and cloud infrastructure. Segmentation, in particular, has become a recurring theme in public and private sector security strategies because it aims to isolate systems and reduce the blast radius of a compromise.

Illumio, which focuses on breach containment, presents the book as a practitioner-led guide rather than a theoretical overview. It says readers can use it to better understand how established Zero Trust concepts apply to newer AI-related risks.

"A wise person once told me there are no great books, only great chapters," said John Kindervag, Creator of Zero Trust, Illumio. "So, I went to the people I trust and asked each of them to write their own great chapter. The result is a collection of ideas, experiences and practical lessons from some of the smartest minds in cybersecurity, showing how Zero Trust can help organisations stay resilient as AI reshapes the threat landscape."