Application & Workload Pillar Activities – Cloud Security, Software Integrity
In a Zero Trust Architecture, access is never assumed; it must be continuously verified.
The Application and Workload Pillar provides a strategic framework to secure, monitor, and manage the behavior and trustworthiness of all applications and workloads operating within your environment, regardless of where they are deployed.
This pillar focuses on ensuring that applications, whether legacy, cloud-native, containerized, or hybrid, adhere to strict security standards throughout their lifecycle. It emphasizes secure software development practices, continuous workload validation, and policy enforcement based on application behavior and risk posture.

What Are the Application and Workload Activities?
The activities within the Application and Workload Pillar help your organization:
- Gain visibility into application behaviors and interdependencies
- Enforce least privilege and segmentation across workloads
- Validate integrity and compliance of deployed applications
- Detect and respond to anomalous or unauthorized application activity
These actions align with the core Zero Trust principle: “Never trust, always verify.”
Explore the activities below to strengthen your application security posture and ensure workloads operate in accordance with Zero Trust principles (Bold links will open the article directly; standard links require a free download of the full collection.) :
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.1.1 Application and Code Identification
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.2.1 Build DevSecOps Software Factory Part 1
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.2.2 Build DevSecOps Software Factory Part 2
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.2.3 Automate Application Security & Code Remediation Part 1
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.3.1 Approved Binaries and Code
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.3.2 Vulnerability Management Program Part 1
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.3.3 Vulnerability Management Program Part 2
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.3.4 Continual Validation
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.4.1 Resource Authorization Part 1
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.4.2 Resource Authorization Part 2
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.4.3 SDC Resource Authorization Part 1
- Application and Workload Pillar – Activity 3.4.4 SDC Resource Authorization Part 2
The Application and Workload Pillar
The Application and Workload Pillar is a core component of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) that focuses on securing the software and computational workloads running within an enterprise, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments.
This pillar ensures that applications and services are verified, continuously monitored, and securely configured throughout their lifecycle.








