ZeroTrustAware: Study of the Awareness and Perceptions of Employees towards Zero Trust Principles in Preventing Cybersecurity Breaches on a Quantitative-Descriptive Survey Design

The newer more digitalized world suggests that the organizations are quickly transitioning to cloud computing, mixed in-office, as well as work-from-home solutions that are putting much of the region at risk of cyber attack. Previously, there was only one form of security that was taken into account and the economy of scale was applied to overcome any form of attack by using a number of less than one to apply the security measures. However, any single-model security solution cannot be sufficient to combat the present risk of phishing, credential theft, and insider attacks anymore. To combat these forces, one has a solution known as the Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) and it is founded on the principle in which you never trust and always verify. In this research, the purpose was to measure the knowledge, attitudes, and organizational preparedness of the employees to the concept of Zero Trust in relation to the decrease in the number of cybersecurity events. The number of respondents to measure the issue was 100 employees in different IT related and administration fields, the mode of data collection was an online survey using Google Forms. The quantitative-descriptive survey design was made possible through the correlational approach. The paper has concluded that the overall attitude of the workers to the Zero Trust practices is positive and not ignorant, but the service organization should focus more efforts and educate its workforce about the principle by offering more training on the subject, to allocate resources and commit itself to the control. Hit and miss Zero Trust is heavily reliant on technology and also on the availability of a professional, educated and aware workforce who is security conscious.