Zero trust with SASE: are your controls keeping up?

TL;DR: Zero trust is hard to operationalise without SASE because fragmented tools, weak visibility and implicit trust undermine consistent policy enforcement across remote users, devices and cloud applications, according to Todyl. The practical shift is from perimeter thinking to identity-first control, continuous verification and tighter segmentation.

Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Todyl: “Achieving Zero Trust with SASE: A Practical Roadmap for Modern Network Security”.

Key questions

Q: What breaks when organisations keep relying on perimeter security instead of Zero Trust?

A: Perimeter security breaks down when trust is assumed after initial access.

Q: What is the difference between SASE and Zero Trust in practice?

A: In practice, Zero Trust is the governance logic that decides who or what should get access, while SASE is the architecture that helps enforce those decisions across the network.

Q: What are the signs that a zero trust rollout is failing in practice?

A: Common warning signs include overlapping tools that do not integrate well, inconsistent policy enforcement across environments, weak visibility into asset and transaction flows, and users bypassing controls because processes are too cumbersome.

Practitioner guidance

• Map every access path and trust boundary Inventory users, endpoints, SaaS applications, data locations and east-west traffic flows before writing policy so your zero-trust design reflects reality rather than assumptions.
• Make identity the primary control plane Tie access to a verified identity provider, enforce MFA, and scope entitlements by role so network location does not decide access.
• Segment internal traffic as aggressively as external traffic Apply micro-segmentation and deny-by-default rules to internal connections so lateral movement is constrained even after initial access is granted.

Bottom line: Zero trust fails when network location still acts as a proxy for trust, because distributed work and cloud services erase the perimeter the model depended on.

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