Zero Trust at the Edge - Bridging Industrial Systems With Verifiable Credentials and OpenZiti

Explore a conference talk that demonstrates implementing Zero Trust security architecture in industrial environments using open-source technologies. Learn how to address the challenge of secure collaboration between internal employees and external technicians when traditional centralized identity systems like LDAP prove inadequate for managing external parties and industrial constraints prevent modifying legacy equipment. Discover a pragmatic architecture that combines OpenZiti and W3C Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to enforce Zero Trust at the application level, integrating decentralized identity management for external supplier technicians with corporate OIDC for internal staff. Understand how this approach enables secure, identity-aware communication flows without requiring rewrites of legacy MQTT hardware, ensuring that only explicitly authorized actions occur and preventing unauthorized bypass even in constrained industrial setups. Gain insights into application-level binding techniques that strengthen security in complex industrial environments while demonstrating the practical value and potential of emerging Zero Trust and verifiable credential technologies through real-world integration scenarios.