The traditional approach to cybersecurity, build a strong perimeter and trust everything inside it—no longer works. Hybrid work is permanent, cloud infrastructure is the norm, and the attack surface extends far beyond any physical office. Password-based attacks now account for more than 99 percent of identity-related breaches, and 22 percent of all breaches in 2025 began with stolen credentials.
Zero trust is the security model built for this reality. The global zero trust market reached roughly $42 to $48 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to over $100 billion by the early 2030s. Eighty-two percent of organizations now consider zero trust essential to their security strategy. Yet only 17 percent have fully implemented it—a gap that represents both a risk and an opportunity.
Here is what zero trust means, how it works, and how to move your organization toward it.
What is the zero trust model?
Zero trust is a security framework built on a simple principle: never trust, always verify. Unlike traditional models that grant broad access once a user passes the perimeter firewall, zero trust treats every connection—internal or external—as a potential threat. Every request for access is fully authenticated, authorized, and encrypted before it is granted, regardless of where it originates.
The concept was first articulated by Forrester Research analyst John Kindervag. It has since been adopted as a strategic priority by the U.S. Department of Defense, which requires all DoD contractors to achieve target-level zero trust by fiscal year 2027, and by federal agencies under executive orders mandating zero trust architecture across government systems.
How is the zero trust model different?
Traditional security operates on a "trust but verify" principle: once you are inside the network perimeter, you are largely trusted. Zero trust eliminates that assumption entirely.
In a zero trust architecture, there is no trusted zone. Every user, device, and application must prove its identity and authorization for each specific request. Access is granted at the minimum level needed for the task—a principle called least-privilege access. And the system continuously monitors behavior in real time, revoking access the moment something looks wrong.
This approach is critical because the biggest threats today are not outsiders breaking through firewalls—they are insiders with legitimate credentials doing unauthorized things, stolen credentials being used from unexpected locations, and compromised devices moving laterally through networks. Zero trust assumes these threats exist and designs security around containing them.
What are the zero trust principles?
Verify every identity. No user or device is trusted by default. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is the baseline—the MFA segment held 72 percent of the zero trust market share in 2025. Passwordless authentication and biometric verification are increasingly replacing traditional passwords.
Enforce least-privilege access. Users receive only the minimum access required for their role. This limits the blast radius of any compromised account—if an attacker breaches one credential, they cannot move freely across the network.
Use microsegmentation. The network is divided into isolated segments, each with its own access controls. A breach in one segment is contained there and cannot spread to others. This is one of the most effective strategies for limiting lateral movement by attackers.
Monitor continuously in real time. Zero trust relies on continuous analytics—not periodic reports—to detect anomalies, identify threats, and respond immediately. Real-time monitoring dramatically reduces "breakout time," the window between initial compromise and lateral movement to other systems.
Assume breach. Zero trust architectures are designed with the assumption that a breach has already occurred or will occur. Every control is built to detect, contain, and recover from compromise—not just prevent it.
What is the ROI of zero trust?
Organizations that have deployed zero trust architecture saved an average of $1.76 million per breach in 2025, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report—making it the third most cost-effective security control after tested incident response plans and extensive use of AI and automation. For organizations that experience even one breach, the investment in zero trust pays for itself.
How does HP support a zero trust approach?
Zero trust requires every endpoint—every laptop, workstation, printer, and connected device—to be verifiable, secure, and continuously monitored. This is where hardware-level security becomes essential.
HP Wolf Security is a full-stack, AI-powered endpoint protection suite designed around zero trust principles. It provides hardware-enforced isolation, deep learning malware detection, and firmware-level self-healing recovery—security that operates below the operating system, where software-only solutions cannot reach.
Key HP Wolf Security capabilities that align with zero trust include HP Sure Start, which detects and automatically recovers from BIOS-level attacks. HP Sure Click, which isolates browser tabs, email attachments, and downloaded files in hardware-enforced micro-virtual machines—containing threats at the endpoint so they cannot spread. HP Sure Run, which keeps critical security processes running even if malware attempts to disable them. And HP Sure Recover, which restores a compromised operating system to a known-good state in minutes, without requiring internet access.
For fleet-wide zero trust enforcement, HP's Workforce Experience Platform (WXP) gives IT teams a single console to monitor device health, enforce security policies, and manage firmware updates across every HP PC and printer in the organization. And HP Protect and Trace with Wolf Connect uses cellular technology to locate, lock, and erase lost or stolen PCs even when they are disconnected from the internet or powered off—a critical capability for preventing credential and data exposure from lost devices.
A Forrester study on HP Wolf Security found that hardware-enforced zero trust endpoint protection reduces the attack surface and improves productivity—demonstrating that stronger security does not have to come at the cost of user experience.
How to start moving toward zero trust
Zero trust is not a product you install—it is a strategy you implement over time. Here is a practical path forward.
Assess your current state. Map your users, devices, applications, and data flows. Identify where trust is currently assumed and where access controls are weakest. Inventory legacy systems that may not support modern authentication.
Start with identity. Identity is the foundation of zero trust. Implement multi-factor authentication across all systems. Move toward passwordless authentication where possible. Ensure that every device connecting to your network can be verified.
Segment your network. Implement microsegmentation to contain breaches. Isolate sensitive data and critical systems behind separate access controls.
Upgrade your endpoints. Devices that cannot support modern security controls—firmware verification, hardware-enforced isolation, encrypted boot—are liabilities. HP business PCs with built-in Wolf Security provide zero trust-ready endpoints out of the box.
Monitor continuously and adapt. Deploy real-time analytics to detect anomalies. Build incident response plans and test them regularly. Zero trust is a continuous process, not a one-time project.
The bottom line
Zero trust is no longer an emerging concept—it is the direction the entire cybersecurity industry is moving. Organizations that adopt it early save money, reduce breach impact, and build resilience against the credential-based, AI-augmented attacks that define the current threat landscape. The gap between knowing zero trust is important and actually implementing it is closing fast. The time to start is now.
