Zero Trust is a direction, not a product. The fastest progress comes from identity, and most of it uses licences you already own.
Zero Trust gets talked about as if it were a product you can buy. It is not. It is a direction, and the organisations that make real progress treat it as a sequence of decisions about identity, devices, and data rather than a purchase.
Start with identity, because attackers do
Most breaches begin with a credential. That makes Microsoft Entra ID the highest-leverage place to start. Conditional Access, phishing-resistant multifactor authentication, and Privileged Identity Management move you further than any new tool, and they use licensing most organisations already hold.
- Turn on risk-based Conditional Access so bad sign-ins get challenged and good ones flow
- Move admins to just-in-time access with PIM, so standing privilege stops being a liability
- Require compliant, managed devices for access to sensitive data through Intune
Then verify continuously
Zero Trust means checking posture on every request, not just at login. Defender and Entra signals feed that decision. The work is mostly configuration, not procurement.
Done well, users barely notice. Only risky sign-ins get challenged, and the rest of the day carries on.
If you want a starting point, a posture assessment against your current Entra configuration will usually surface a short list of high-impact changes you can make this quarter.