In today's cloud-native ecosystems, secure communication is the cornerstone of trust. But how do we build that trust, starting from the basics of cryptography and scaling up to zero trust architectures? This session takes you on a journey from the fundamentals of encryption and public-private key pairs to the intricacies of TLS, mutual TLS (mTLS), and X.509 certificates. Along the way, we'll explore how these technologies work together to protect against eavesdropping, tampering, and identity theft. Finally, we'll connect the dots to zero trust, showing how secure communication is essential for verifying identities and ensuring trust in every interaction. Whether you're new to cloud administration or looking to solidify your security fundamentals, this beginner-friendly talk will equip you with the knowledge to build and maintain secure systems.