ZERO TRUST ARCHITECTURE IN GITOPS: AN IDENTITY-CENTRIC APPROACH TO CLOUD DEPLOYMENT SECURITY

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel implementation of Zero Trust principles in GitOps-managed Kubernetes clusters. Using IAM, OIDC, and ArgoCD access patterns, we present a fine-grained, identity-aware deployment pipeline that enforces policy-as-code and continuous security validation, validated in a production-scale AWS environment. Our approach demonstrates significant improvements in deployment security posture while maintaining operational efficiency, achieving 99.7% policy compliance and reducing unauthorized access attempts by 87%. The framework introduces identity-centric access controls that eliminate implicit trust assumptions in traditional GitOps workflows, establishing a new paradigm for secure cloud-native deployment architectures.