
Zero Trust Server Security: A 2025 Field Guide for Real‑World Teams
Zero trust server security sounds grand until you’re staring at a pager at 2:11 a.m. with a blast of failed SSH attempts and a CPU graph that looks like a picket fence. That was me last spring. A forgotten jump box, a stale local admin, and a permissive security group invited trouble. We got lucky—no data moved, the doors slammed shut, and the lessons stuck. Since that night, I’ve been ruthless about small, boring controls that add up to a fortress. What follows is the exact playbook I reach for now, tuned for 2025 realities and written for folks who actually have to run this stuff at 3 a.m. Here’s the vibe: honest tactics, minimal heroics, and lots of receipts....