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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/zero-trust-security-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Zero-Trust SecurityZero-Trust Security Patents: Who Leads and Where the Filing Is Headed
- 34.6% concentration at the top. The top 5 assignees combined hold 610 of the 1,763 records in scope — a leader well ahead of the field plus a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
- Filing more than doubled in three years. Filings rose from 125 in 2021 to 293 in 2024, a 134% increase over that span, before the dataset's most recent, still-incomplete years.
- H04L and G06F dominate the claim space. 69.5% of records touch digital information transmission (H04L) and 51.5% touch electric digital data processing (G06F) — the two classes where prior art is thickest.
1,763
Published Records
35%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+134%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (125 records) with 2024 (293) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 1,763 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··6 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What the zero-trust security patent record shows
Zero-trust security patenting sits at the intersection of network access control, continuous authentication and encryption key management. The search scope covers 1,763 published records from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, combining terms like zero trust architecture and continuous authentication with core mechanisms such as authentication tokens, encryption keys and security policy enforcement. Filing activity was modest through the late 2010s and accelerated sharply from 2021, peaking at 392 records in 2023.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025-2026 figures in this dataset understate real filing activity for those years and should not be read as a slowdown. The clearer signal is the three-year run to 2024, the last year that can be treated as complete.
Filing activity, 2017-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Zero-Trust Security Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The data
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,763-record dataset: the pace at which zero-trust security filings have been made, and the IPC subclasses those filings actually claim against.
Filing trend
From 50 records in 2017 to a peak of 392 in 2023, with 2021-2024 showing the strongest sustained growth (+134%). The 2025 and 2026 counts are still filling in as later-filed applications publish.
IPC composition
H04L (digital information transmission) and G06F (electric digital data processing) each cover more than half of all records, confirming that most zero-trust claims are written as network-transmission or data-processing mechanisms rather than as wireless-specific (H04W, 15.8%) or AI-model-specific (G06N, 9.0%) inventions.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,763 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Zero-Trust Security Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Representative and most-cited filings
Representative filing
Mobile network information sharing via eBPF for zero trust security
PALO ALTO NETWORKS, INC.
Techniques for mobile network information sharing via extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) for zero trust security are disclosed. The system monitors network traffic in a core mobile network using an agent on a network element to identify a session associated with a User Equipment (UE) attached to the network, extracts meta information associated with that session, and sends the extracted meta information onward for zero-trust policy decisions.Filed by Palo Alto Networks, published 2024-12-26 — illustrates how zero-trust claims are increasingly written at the network-element and session-metadata level rather than at the endpoint-credential level.
Most-cited records in scope
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20140289833A1 | Advanced authentication techniques and applications | 1,081 |
| 2 | US6185316B1 | Self-authentication apparatus and method | 618 |
| 3 | US20100034238A1 | Spread spectrum wireless resonant power delivery | 527 |
| 4 | US20180191501A1 | System and method for sharing keys across authenticators | 506 |
| 5 | US20020095587A1 | Smart card with integrated biometric sensor | 456 |
| 6 | US20090106551A1 | Dynamic distributed key system and method for identity management, authentication servers, data security and … | 429 |
| 7 | US20020095586A1 | Technique for continuous user authentication | 423 |
| 8 | US20210399911A1 | Systems, methods, and apparatus for meeting management | 369 |
| 9 | US5311596A | Continuous authentication using an in-band or out-of-band side channel | 345 |
| 10 | US20060288234A1 | System and method for providing secure access to an electronic device using facial biometrics | 337 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations within this corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later work, not as a ranking of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Zero-Trust Security Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the assignee, class and citation data that matter more than the raw counts on their own.
Concentration
34.6%
of all 1,763 records held by the top 5
A leader ahead of a long tail
The leading assignee alone accounts for 329 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 41. That gap, combined with a top-10 share of 43.1%, points to one dominant filer plus a wide field of smaller and single-filing entrants rather than a tightly clustered oligopoly.
Assignee ranking, 100 companies
Momentum
+134%
growth from 2021 (125) to 2024 (293)
Growth is real, not an artefact of the most recent years
The three-year run to 2024 is the clearest evidence of accelerating investment in this space; 2025-2026 figures are still incomplete due to publication lag and should not be read against 2024 as a decline.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Claim density
69.5%
of records touch H04L
Transmission and data-processing claims are the densest ground
H04L and G06F together cover the large majority of records, meaning new filings aimed squarely at network-transmission or general data-processing framing will land on the most crowded prior art. Wireless-specific (H04W) and business-process (G06Q) framings carry noticeably less density.
IPC composition, 8 subclasses shown
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to zero-trust security patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Zero-Trust Security Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Who's filing
Assignee landscape and recent momentum
The ranked assignee list spans 100 companies drawn from the full 1,763-record dataset. It is not a top-50 or top-100 cut of a larger universe — it is the whole ranking the data endpoint returns.
Leader
329
records
One assignee sets the pace
The top-ranked assignee's record count is nearly eight times the fifth-place holder's 41, making it the single most useful filer to track for freedom-to-operate work in this space.
Assignee ranking
Mid-field
23
records at 10th place
A sharp drop after the top tier
Filing counts fall from 41 at fifth place to 23 at tenth, and the top 10 combined still only reach 43.1% of all records — most of the ranked field files in single or low double digits.
Top 10 combined, 760 records
Momentum
-95% YoY
for the leading recent filer shown
Recent-year counts are thin across the board
Latest-year momentum figures for tracked assignees are low or negative across the board — consistent with publication lag rather than an actual pullback in zero-trust investment, since 2024 was the strongest complete year on record.
Recent-year momentum by assignee
Recent-year filing momentum
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Zscaler, Inc. | 2 | -95% |
| Palo Alto Networks, Inc. | 1 | -90% |
| LACEWORK INC | 0 | — |
| Fortinet, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Nok Nok Labs, Inc. | 0 | — |
| STRONG FORCE TX PORTFOLIO 2018 LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Strong Force VCN Portfolio 2019, LLC | 0 | -100% |
| SCIENCE HOUSE LLC | 0 | -100% |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Zero-Trust Security Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's next
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio benchmarking, or spotting where to file next.
Map the leader's claim scope in detail
With one assignee holding 329 of 1,763 records, understanding exactly which claim elements that portfolio covers is the fastest way to find out where a new filing would actually compete for space.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaTrack the under-claimed branches
Sub-areas like continuous authentication risk scoring and eBPF-based session metadata sit well below the H04L/G06F density of the core field, and are worth watching for early movers before the space fills in.
Set up a white-space alert in EurekaRe-check the 2025-2026 trend once publication catches up
The 2024 growth figure is solid; the 2025-2026 counts are not yet complete, so revisit the trend chart on a cycle rather than treating the latest bar as the current state of filing.
Monitor filing trends in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Zero-Trust Security Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about the zero-trust security patent landscape
One assignee leads the ranked field with 329 records out of the 1,763 in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 41. The gap between first and fifth place is large enough that the field is better described as one dominant filer plus a long tail of smaller and single-filing entrants, rather than several closely matched leaders. The top 10 assignees combined still only reach 43.1% of all records, so most of the filing activity sits outside the ranked leaders.
Yes, based on the last complete filing year in the dataset. Filings rose from 125 in 2021 to 293 in 2024, a 134% increase, with a peak of 392 records in 2023. The 2025 and 2026 counts appear lower only because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so those years are still filling in rather than showing an actual decline.
The two densest classes are H04L (digital information transmission), covering 69.5% of the 1,763 records, and G06F (electric digital data processing), covering 51.5%. Wireless communication networks (H04W, 15.8%) and AI-model-based computing (G06N, 9.0%) are present but far less crowded. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should be read as coverage rates, not as a breakdown of the total.
The under-claimed areas sit adjacent to the dominant H04L/G06F transmission and data-processing framing: continuous authentication risk scoring, policy-driven micro-segmentation enforcement, and eBPF-based session metadata extraction all show comparatively thin claim density in this dataset. AI-model overlap (G06N, 9.0% of records) and image/video-based identity verification (G06V, 3.7%) are also lightly claimed relative to the core field, making them worth a closer freedom-to-operate check before assuming they are occupied.
US20240430680A1, assigned to Palo Alto Networks and published December 2024, covers a method for zero-trust security that uses an agent on a network element inside a core mobile network to monitor traffic, identify a session tied to a specific User Equipment, extract session metadata, and forward that metadata for policy decisions. It is built on extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) instrumentation, which places it in the network-element and session-metadata layer of zero-trust enforcement rather than at the endpoint-credential layer. Anyone building session-level, eBPF-based zero-trust monitoring for mobile core networks should review its specific claim language before designing a similar agent.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Zero-Trust Security Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.