“Zero trust” shows up on more product pages than almost any other term in security marketing right now — which is a shame, because the actual idea behind it has nothing to do with which product you buy.
Zero trust means continuous verification instead of one-time perimeter checks, least-privilege access as the default rather than the exception, and an operating assumption that a breach has already happened somewhere in your environment. None of that is a checkbox a vendor can ship you.
The most common mistake we see is a company buying a “zero trust” product, switching it on, and considering the initiative complete — without ever changing how access requests get approved, how often permissions get reviewed, or how identity is actually verified day to day.
Real adoption starts with identity: know who has access to what, and why. From there, map what actually needs protecting, review access on a real cadence — quarterly, not “whenever someone remembers” — and treat the whole thing as an ongoing discipline rather than a project with an end date.