Glossary
Zero Trust Architecture
Definition: Zero Trust is an architectural principle, not a product: no user, device, or system is trusted by default, and every access request is verified explicitly, regardless of whether it originates inside or outside the traditional network perimeter.
Every vendor sells a Zero Trust product. None of them can sell you the actual thing, which is an architectural decision, not a feature you install. The distinction matters because most “Zero Trust” deployments are still perimeter thinking with a new badge: a VPN plus MFA, verified once at login, then trusted for the rest of the session. Real Zero Trust means a device wiped by an attacker who already had valid credentials still gets stopped, because the architecture never assumed that credential alone was sufficient. Stryker’s 200,000-device Intune wipe is the case that makes this concrete: device management and access control, treated as continuously verified rather than trusted-once, is the actual control, not whichever product logo sits on the dashboard.