Zero Trust has become a dominant concept in cybersecurity, yet few organizations have implemented it fully. Its popularity is driven by the increasing complexity of enterprise networks, the rise of remote work and hybrid workforces, and broad adoption of cloud-based services. With the traditional network perimeter all but dissolved, organizations are turning to new models to enhance security.
Surveys suggest Zero Trust adoption is widespread. Gartner reports that 63% of organizations worldwide have fully or partially implemented a Zero Trust strategy. Similarly, a StrongDM survey of 600 cybersecurity professionals found 81% of organizations have fully or partially adopted Zero Trust, with 84% pursuing it specifically for cloud security. Globally, adoption grew from 24 percent in 2021 to 61 percent in 2023 according to a report from Okta.
However, adoption does not equal maturity. The Gartner report finds only 16% of organizations report Zero Trust covers 75% or more of their environment, while 11% cover less than 10%. The picture of maturity remains bleak: by 2026, only 10% of large enterprises are expected to have a mature, measurable Zero Trust program.
Patrick Ethier, CTO at SecureOps, explains: “When we're saying 63% of the population has achieved zero trust, what we're basically saying is they've bought a product and integrated their identities with some security controls, but there's no true top-to-bottom stack anymore these days.”
This distinction is critical. Many organizations adopt the term “Zero Trust” as a checkbox exercise, often focusing on compliance or vendor solutions rather than full integration into their trust architecture. This article examines the core principles of Zero Trust, the technologies that support it, the pitfalls of vendor hype, and how organizations can achieve meaningful security improvements rather than superficial compliance.
Zero Trust is a cybersecurity philosophy and strategy summarized in the expression, “never trust, always verify.” This refers to a granular security approach in which implicit trust is not granted to users inside the network. Patrick underscores this, saying “The core of Zero Trust is to gain control of the identity, the device management and the network access to the application.”
Meanwhile, NIST defines the concept as:
“A collection of concepts and ideas designed to minimize uncertainty in enforcing accurate, least privilege per-request access decisions in information systems and services in the face of a network viewed as compromised.”
Zero Trust rests on several foundational principles, each addressing a key dimension of enterprise security:
By addressing each of core principles simultaneously, Zero Trust becomes a holistic approach rather than a collection of isolated technologies. That said, technologies are the practical levers for enforcing Zero Trust principles. These technologies form a layered defense, each reinforcing the other. Without this integration, access control is fragmented and security gaps proliferate.
Common technologies found in Zero Trust initiatives include:
Executive Order EO 14028, issued by the Biden administration on May 12, 2021, was a response to growing cybersecurity threats, including high-profile supply chain attacks such as SolarWinds. It mandates standardized cybersecurity practices across federal agencies, requiring contractors to align with Zero Trust frameworks to participate in FedRamp or other federal projects.
While necessary for compliance, EO 14028 inadvertently diluted the original philosophy of Zero Trust. Many vendors now market their products as “Zero Trust-ready,” emphasizing checklist compliance rather than top-to-bottom security. This shift is reflected in market trends: the global Zero Trust security market is projected to grow from USD 36.5 billion in 2024 to USD 78.7 billion by 2029, driven not only by increasing threats but also by organizations responding to compliance mandates and the widespread marketing of Zero Trust solutions.
Patrick warns, “The positive aspect is awareness, but the negative aspect is the craftiness of the sales cycle to hype this up into something it’s not.” With that warning, it is critical to approach a Zero Trust initiative with the goal of security maturity. Compliance, with some exceptions, can be achieved as a matter of course.
Implementing Zero Trust is as much a strategic exercise as it is a technical one. Success depends on sequencing, stakeholder alignment, and realistic expectations. Taken broadly, the Zero Trust implementation process follows six-steps.
Recommended starting points:
Common pitfalls:
By emphasizing early wins, clear metrics, and iterative deployment, organizations can realize the benefits of Zero Trust while mitigating common challenges. A mature Zero Trust secures critical assets while enabling business agility.
Benefits:
Challenges / Trade-offs:
Quantifying the effectiveness of a Zero Trust implementation is critical for guiding strategy, allocating resources, and demonstrating value to stakeholders. Metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) provide objective insight into both security posture and operational efficiency.
Coverage of Applications and Endpoints
Tracking which applications, systems, and endpoints are operating under Zero Trust policies is a foundational KPI. Full coverage ensures that access controls, identity verification, and device checks are consistently applied across the enterprise. Partial or inconsistent coverage can create blind spots that undermine security. As Patrick explains:
“Determine how many people are accessing their email using company devices versus personal devices. And then afterwards you can turn around and make a decision to restrict access to their company email if they're not using a company laptop.”
He further quantifies the risk, showing how coverage metrics inform policy decisions:
“Okay, I've got 14% of people accessing their email from a personal device. From a risk standpoint, you're able to quantify that as well.”
These insights allow CISOs to prioritize remediation efforts where exposure is highest and ensure consistent enforcement across the organization.
Device Compliance and Network Enforcement
Device posture and network enforcement metrics evaluate how effectively policies are applied at both the endpoint and network levels. Patrick emphasizes:
“You can easily then turn around and determine how many people have EDR or antivirus on their company device when they access my application and now you're further able to explain your risk based on that.”
Such metrics enable organizations to enforce security standards without disrupting legitimate workflows, ensuring that both device compliance and network controls support operational efficiency.
Behavioral Analytics and Incident Response Metrics
Behavioral analytics and incident response KPIs help assess whether Zero Trust policies effectively detect anomalous activity and reduce risk. As Patrick notes:
“Zero Trust provides a huge amount of context for something like your SOC or NOC in terms of performance and whatnot to be able to come up with a lot of these contextual decisions.”
This added visibility improves detection, accelerates response times, and informs security operations with the context needed to make precise, data-driven decisions.
Quantitative Risk Measurement
Beyond coverage and compliance, KPIs allow security leaders to quantify residual risk and make informed trade-offs. Patrick highlights how contextual controls further reduce exposure:
“If you’re using an application that supports contextual based policies, like Google Workspace, you can contextually change the features and data a user can access whether they’re using a personal device or a compliant company device, and this contributes to further reducing that risk.”
By measuring both usage patterns and device compliance, organizations can target risk reduction initiatives—such as conditional access, MFA, or device restrictions—based on concrete data rather than assumptions.
The rise of artificial intelligence is reshaping cybersecurity landscapes, introducing new layers of complexity for Zero Trust implementations. Traditional Zero Trust frameworks focus on verifying the identity of human users and their devices, continuously assessing risk based on context, device posture, and access behavior. AI, however, introduces automated agents that act on behalf of users, performing tasks like generating reports, summarizing emails, or interacting with applications, essentially acting as a proxy for the human user.
Without proper monitoring and policy frameworks, organizations risk shadow AI deployments—unauthorized AI tools that interact with corporate systems without visibility, potentially exfiltrating sensitive data or bypassing established controls. Zero Trust mitigates potential risks by applying the same principles used for human users to AI agents. Every access request is authenticated, validated, and assessed in context. Organizations can distinguish between approved AI agents, which operate within controlled environments, and unapproved AI activity, which can be detected, blocked, or sandboxed.
Key practices include:
Effectively, your Zero Trust initiative must make AI interactions observable and controllable. By managing AI as an extension of the user identity, organizations can leverage automation while maintaining strict governance, risk reduction, and operational clarity.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a framework that combines networking and security services in a cloud-native, cloud-delivered model. By converging these functions (network routing, secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers (CASBs), and ZTNA) SASE simplifies policy enforcement and centralizes security controls for distributed organizations.
To clarify our discussion of Zero Trust, it is important to outline how these two ideas overlap and interact.
Simplifying Network Access
SASE provides a streamlined approach to managing network access across locations, devices, and users. By integrating with identity and device management platforms, SASE can automatically enforce Zero Trust principles such as continuous authentication, device compliance, and least-privilege access, despite being distinct from Zero Trust. Patrick summarizes, “SASE is generally a go-to to handle the network access problems because they plug in with identity & device management very simply.”
In practice, this means security teams can focus less on managing disparate VPNs, firewalls, and network segments, and more on monitoring access patterns and responding to risk in real time.
Coverage and Adoption
According to Patrick, SASE typically addresses approximately 70–75% of network access needs, making it a powerful accelerator for Zero Trust adoption, especially in hybrid or remote-first environments. Enterprises with global or cloud-first workforces benefit from SASE’s ability to enforce consistent security policies regardless of user location or device type.
Flexibility and Synergy
While SASE provides substantial network access coverage, it is not a requirement for implementing Zero Trust. Organizations can implement Zero Trust without SASE, but doing so often requires additional configuration and integration efforts. SASE acts as a force multiplier, reducing complexity and operational overhead, and providing a foundation on which identity and device management controls can operate more effectively.
Zero Trust is not static; it is a philosophy that evolves as technology, threat landscapes, and organizational needs change. As we watch the evolution of Zero Trust ideas, we can recognize trends in the market.
Context-Based Access Control
Enterprises are increasingly moving away from purely role-based access controls toward more context-based and adaptive access models, which adjust permissions dynamically based on real-time factors. These factors may include user location, device posture, network conditions, time of access, and the sensitivity of the requested resource.
Role-based access controls (RBAC) provide a foundation, but they often fail to capture the nuance required in modern environments. Context-based access control (CBAC) adds a layer of intelligence that evaluates conditions continuously. This allows for just-in-time access adjustments, risk-aware decision-making, and enforcement that reflects the current security posture rather than static job titles or predefined roles.
Balancing Security and Usability
A significant challenge in evolving Zero Trust is avoiding overcomplication. Overly granular policies can lock down critical workflows, reduce productivity, and frustrate users. Conversely, overly permissive rules introduce security gaps. Successful Zero Trust implementations strike a balance by leveraging context, automation, and monitoring to maintain both security and usability.
By embracing these evolutionary trends, CISOs can ensure that Zero Trust implementations remain effective, scalable, and aligned with the rapidly changing digital landscape.
Zero Trust is no longer optional. It has become an essential framework for organizations seeking to protect their networks, data, and users in a world of hybrid work, cloud adoption, and increasingly sophisticated threats. Yet, as the data shows, adoption often stops at the surface. Many organizations implement technologies labeled as Zero Trust without fully integrating the architecture or operational practices that make it effective.
True Zero Trust requires a holistic approach that spans identity, devices, networks, applications, and data. It demands continuous verification, least-privilege access, and a mindset that assumes breaches are inevitable. Incremental adoption, guided by clear metrics and high-value priorities, allows organizations to balance security with usability while achieving measurable risk reduction.
For security leaders, the lesson is clear. Zero Trust is not a single product or a compliance checkbox. It is a strategic, evolving approach that, when executed thoughtfully, reduces risk, strengthens visibility, simplifies user experience, and builds resilience against current and future threats.
To move beyond theory and build a practical Zero Trust roadmap for your organization, contact the experts at SecureOps today.