John Kindervag on Muck Rack

John Kindervag

  • Chief Evangelist, Illumio
  • Contributor, Freelance
Dallas
As seen in: LinkedIn, Dark Reading, Infosecurity Magazine, Security Boulevard, SC Magazine UK, Security Magazine, Global Security Mag (France), Carahsoft, Illumio, The Stack and
Creator of Zero Trust. Chief Evangelist at Illumio. Former SVP at ON2IT. Former Field CTO at Palo Alto Networks. Former Forrester analyst.
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work. Claim your profile

Get in touch with John

Contact John, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.

Learn more about Muck Rack

Actions

Share this page

Is this you?

As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile

Articles

Fifteen Years Later, Zero Trust Is Still About One Thing: Good Policy

|
By John Kindervag
| Cybersecurity Asia
When I first started talking about Zero Trust, people told me I was insane. Seriously. I was called a “nutter.” Told it would never work. That no one in their right mind would adopt a model that challenged the core assumption networks were built on: trust. But I couldn’t let the idea go. Not because I set out to start a movement—I didn’t. I just thought the existing firewall policies were dumb. Back then, I worked with firewalls that automatically assigned trust to interfaces.
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?

Zero Trust at 15: The Strategy That Refused To Become a Product

|
By John Kindervag
| Security Magazine Verified
15 years ago, while working as an analyst at Forrester Research, I introduced the zero trust security model. At the time, cybersecurity professionals still relied on the flawed idea that they could trust everything inside the network. But real-world breaches told a different story: attackers were exploiting a broken trust model, bypassing defenses with ease, and then moving laterally to their objectives. From the beginning, zero trust was never a tool or a feature; it was a strategy.
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?

15 Years of Zero Trust: Why It Matters More Than Ever

|
By John Kindervag
| Dark Reading Verified
COMMENTARY Fifteen years ago, I introduced the zero-trust security model while working as an analyst at Forrester Research. At the time, cybersecurity was still rooted in perimeter-based thinking, built on the assumption that everything inside the network could be trusted. But real-world breaches told a different story. Attackers were moving laterally, exploiting implicit trust, and bypassing traditional defenses with ease.
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?
See all 50 articles
 •  Privacy  •  Terms  •  Security and Legal  •   •   •   • 

© 2026 Muck Rack

SOC 2® Certified