As cyber threats grow more complex, traditional perimeter-based security is no longer enough and more organisations are turning to a Zero Trust approach. Businesses now face a range of challenges like remote workforces, Shadow IT, sophisticated attacks, and a growing reliance on the cloud. Data breaches are becoming increasingly expensive, with the global average cost reaching a staggering $4.45 million in 2023. In response, the Zero Trust model has become a leading cyber defense strategy with 63% of organizations adopting it and 78% dedicating around a quarter of their cybersecurity budget to the implementation of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA).
In today’s hybrid work environment and cloud-first world, Zero Trust is essential to help organizations reduce risks like insider threats, data breaches, and unauthorized access. Built on the principle of “never trust, always verify,” it’s more of a mindset than a framework, and assumes no user, device, or app should be trusted by default. This approach minimizes the attack surface, ensuring that every user, device, and request is authenticated and authorized before accessing critical systems – regardless of location or prior interactions.
Here’s how adopting a Zero Trust strategy can reduce your attack surface and bolster your organization’s overall security posture:
Assess Your Current Security Setup
Before implementing Zero Trust, it’s important to assess your entire IT environment to highlight risks and vulnerabilities. Start by identifying all assets, including hardware, software, and endpoints, across your network, then assess their attack surfaces, and implement robust security measures to prevent future breaches.
Complete a comprehensive audit of your IT environment to pinpoint potential vulnerabilities that could expose your network to attack. By mapping out your assets and their configurations, you create a foundation for informed, effective security decisions as you move forward with Zero Trust.
Verify Explicitly: Trust Nothing, Authenticate Everything
In a Zero Trust model, the core principle is “verify explicitly.” Many organizations rely on common verification methods like passwords and even multi-factor authentication (MFA), but true security goes beyond the obvious. To build real resilience, verification must become second nature, incorporating overlooked but essential checks like device health assessments, location-based access controls, and continuous user behavior analysis. These layers of validation ensure that every device and user, whether inside or outside the corporate network, meets strict security standards – turning security from a one-time checkpoint into an ongoing governance practice.
Use Least Privilege Access: Minimizing Permissions, Maximizing Security
Rather than granting users broad access, permissions should always be based on the principle of Just-In-Time (JIT) and Just-Enough-Access (JEA) to ensure users only have the access they need to perform their tasks, and nothing more.
Risk-based adaptive policies further refine this approach by dynamically adjusting access based on context. For example, a remote user logging in from their company-issued laptop during business hours may have seamless access to critical systems. However, if the same user attempts to download sensitive data at midnight from a personal device, access could be restricted or flagged for review. Similarly, a temporary contractor or third-party vendor might be granted limited, time-bound permissions that automatically expire when their project ends. By continuously auditing permissions and removing dormant accounts or misconfigured settings, organizations can proactively shrink the attack surface, reducing the risk of breaches before they happen.
Assume Breach: Proactive Defense for the Inevitable
Zero Trust works on the assumption that breaches will occur, so the focus shifts to minimizing their impact. To limit the blast radius of any potential breach, segment your organization’s network by dividing the network into smaller, more secure zones, preventing lateral movement and restricting attackers from reaching critical systems. For example, a domain admin’s credentials are compromised through a phishing attack. In a traditional flat network, an attacker with these credentials could move laterally, gaining access to core infrastructure, cloud environments, financial databases, or even deploying ransomware across the entire organization. However, with Zero Trust segmentation and identity-based access controls, the attacker is contained and therefore blocked from escalating privileges, accessing sensitive workloads, or spreading beyond a restricted environment. In addition to segmentation, organizations must implement end-to-end encryption, robust monitoring, and real-time alerts to instantly detect and contain suspicious activity, even on outdated or vulnerable IT systems (e.g., end of life infrastructure).
How SaaS Cloud Insights Tools Drive Zero Trust
It is also worth noting that while not a requirement for Zero Trust, cloud-based SaaS tools can significantly enhance an organization’s ability to implement and maintain a Zero Trust Architecture. These tools offer benefits such as the ability to closely monitor identities, reduce shadow IT, enhance monitoring and analytics, provide automation, and deliver scalability and flexibility. 
Dale is CISO and Product Director at Surveil – an analytics and insights engine – which can help optimize IT spending to reduce waste and unlock funds for investment in crucial cyber defenses.