A Lightweight Zero-Trust Architecture Implementation for Enhancing Cybersecurity in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Confronted by resource limitations and sophisticated cyber threats, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) require tailored cybersecurity solutions. This research introduces and validates a Lightweight Zero-Trust Architecture (LZTA) specifically designed for SMEs. The proposed LZTA effectively integrates contextual access verification, multi-factor authentication, and role-based access control to ensure robust security without imposing excessive costs. Crucially, rigorous benchmarking demonstrated that the LZTA manages high-concurrency loads while significantly outperforming conventional and open-source Zero-Trust baselines in both response time and throughput. This work delivers a practical and high-performance blueprint for SMEs to adopt Zero-Trust principles, effectively balancing robust security with the operational constraints of smaller organisations.