{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,9]],"date-time":"2026-03-09T06:07:32Z","timestamp":1773036452886,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":57,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,5]],"date-time":"2026-03-05T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1772668800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Biomedical Sensors &amp; Systems Lab, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA","award":["1-22-2026"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["1-22-2026"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Future Internet"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Organizations usually rely on stringent access control mechanisms where access policies are an important asset. Their storage or transmission in plaintext can compromise sensitive access rules. It is important in dynamic environments where access decisions are made in real time such as Zero Trust (ZT). Existing ZT approaches were found to oversee the aspect of securing these policies. This investigation presents a Multi-layer Access Policy Encryption System for ZT systems (MAPE-ZT). The first stage uses the trapdoor index to generate a secure index to find the applicable access policies. Advanced Encryption Standard-256 is used in counter mode for the encryption of the policies. They are re-encrypted using the Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) to allow decryption based on a matching set of attributes. Various experiments using quantitative metrics, including comparison with baseline access control systems simulation, scalability evaluation, storage overhead, etc., highlight the efficacy of the MAPE-ZT and establish new benchmarks. The result count entropy for the policies ranged 3.84\u20134.21 for different scales of policies. The evaluation in different scales of systems shows that the MAPE-ZT reduces various observable patterns even if the deployment size grows. Its unique design of securing policies makes this approach scalable for multi-domain integration.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/fi18030135","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,5]],"date-time":"2026-03-05T14:19:21Z","timestamp":1772720361000},"page":"135","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["MAPE-ZT: A Multi-Layer Access Policy Encryption System for Zero Trust Architectures"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"18","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-1196-385X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ashutosh","family":"Soni","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Biomedical Sensors & Systems Lab, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA"},{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C. V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar 752054, India"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7809-2131","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Surendra Kumar","family":"Nanda","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C. V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar 752054, India"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7597-131X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jayanti","family":"Rout","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Biomedical Sensors & Systems Lab, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA"},{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C. V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar 752054, India"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0000-7006-4235","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mrutyunjaya","family":"Sathua","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C. V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar 752054, India"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3555-5685","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ganapati","family":"Panda","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, C. V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar 752054, India"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6656-4333","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Manob Jyoti","family":"Saikia","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Biomedical Sensors & Systems Lab, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA"},{"name":"Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"AAG IT Support Business Security (2025, December 03). The Latest Cyber Crime Statistics (Updated April 2025). Available online: https:\/\/aag-it.com\/the-latest-cyber-crime-statistics\/."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Cybersecurity Ventures (2025, December 05). Global Ransomware Damage Costs Predicted to Exceed $275 Billion by 2031. 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