Effectiveness of Zero Trust Security Against AI and Quantum Computing Threats: A Systematic Literature Review
Abstract
Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) has emerged as a transformative shift from perimeter-based security models toward a “never trust, always verify” approach, emphasizing continuous authentication, dynamic authorization, and micro-segmentation. Despite its adoption across enterprise, government, and critical infrastructure sectors, emerging technologies namely Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Quantum Computing pose unprecedented challenges to ZTA’s resilience. AI-powered threats such as deepfakes, adversarial examples, and data poisoning can compromise biometric verification and evade anomaly detection, while quantum algorithms, including Shor’s, threaten RSA and ECC cryptography through “harvest-now, decrypt-later” attacks. This study addresses the research question: Can Zero Trust Security remain effective in defending against AI-powered cyber threats and quantum computing-based attacks? A Systematic Literature Review was conducted across ACM, Springer, and Google Scholar, synthesizing findings from 45 primary studies, standards, and industry reports. Results highlight that adversarial-hardened, multi-modal identity verification combined with crypto-agility and post-quantum cryptography (PQC) adoption such as CRYSTALS-Kyber and Dilithiumare critical to future-proofing ZTA. However, the literature reveals a significant gap in empirical, end-to-end evaluations under combined AI and quantum threat conditions. The paper concludes by proposing integrated mitigation strategies and…
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