Supervisors: Peter Amthor, Boris Koldehofe
Problem Description:
The thesis examines how Zero-Trust paradigm affect the operational efficiency of cloud-based systems. Its first objective is to develop the Zero-Trust Operational Efficiency Index (ZTOEI), a quantitative framework that reflects the relationship between security benefits and operational costs when Zero-Trust principles are deployed. Following that, the second objective is to empirically apply and evaluate the ZTOEI framework using an experimental deployment. A representative three-tier application is deployed across several architectural scenarios, including single-cluster and nested-cluster deployments with and without Zero-Trust mechanisms. Performance parameters, operational characteristics, and architectural security benefits is measured in each scenario.