The Zero Trust Hub Editions
Zero Trust Segmentation trends, insights, and resources for today's cybersecurity leaders
The Monday Microsegment for the week of 5/4/2026
The Speed of AI Attacks Is Breaking Traditional Cybersecurity Models
On The Tech Trek podcast, Illumio CEO Andrew Rubin explains how the speed of AI-driven attacks is pushing security teams to rethink prevention-first strategies. The shift, he argues, should be from blocking attacks to containing them fast. He says microsegmentation, breach containment, and AI guardrails are essential to limiting risk.
Planned U.K. AI Security Defense Spending Won’t Stop Attacks By Itself
In AI Magazine, Illumio Director of Critical Infrastructure Trevor Dearing says the U.K.’s AI cyber defense initiative is a big step forward. But he cautions that spending alone won’t stop rising attacks. Organizations must focus less on compliance and detection and more on limiting damage through breach containment.
The Certificate of Competency in Zero Trust: A Smart Way to Learn Zero Trust
Chief Evangelist
I’ve had a lot of certifications over the course of my career.
At one point, they felt like part of the job. You earned them to prove your credibility, and you kept them current because that’s what the industry expected.
As my work changed over time, I let almost all of them go.
Today, I hold only one certification: the Certificate of Competency in Zero Trust (CCZT). I was part of the team that created it through the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), and I’m the first one to hold the certification.
That decision came from a pattern the CSA Zero Trust working group kept seeing across organizations. Teams were investing in Zero Trust, talking about it, and building strategies around it. At the same time, they struggled to answer a basic question: how do we know someone actually understands how to apply Zero Trust in a real environment?
That gap is what we designed the CCZT to address. It gives organizations a way to train teams, evaluate skills, and build a shared understanding of how Zero Trust works in practice.
What the CCZT looks like
When we started working on the CCZT, the goal was to create something grounded in real-world application.
The program draws from established guidance, including the 2022 NSTAC report on Zero Trust, which I co-authored, CISA’s Zero Trust Maturity Model, and the five-step methodology I’ve spent years developing and refining.
We built it through a large Zero Trust working group within the CSA, bringing perspectives from across industries, roles, and experience levels. That approach grounded the material in real-world Zero Trust practices and kept it free from vendor bias.
The course is designed to give practitioners a working understanding of how Zero Trust operates across the full lifecycle. It starts with foundational concepts and architecture, then moves into strategy and planning. From there, it covers implementation in real environments, including approaches like software-defined perimeter and guidance aligned to NIST and CISA best practices.
The goal is to connect the strategy to execution, so teams can apply Zero Trust in a way that holds up under real-world conditions.
Why vendor-neutral Zero Trust training is so important
Many certifications in cybersecurity are tied to specific tools or platforms.
That approach doesn’t travel well: tools change, architectures evolve, and every organization runs a different stack.
Zero Trust operates at a different level. It’s a strategic and architectural model that applies across technologies.
The CCZT focuses on core principles. It teaches how to think about Zero Trust, how to define a Protect Surface, and how to apply controls in a way that reduces risk across modern environments. That foundation stays relevant even as technologies shift.
For me, that relevance is what gives the certification long-term value.
The power of the Zero Trust community
The certification is only part of the story. The community behind it plays a major role in how Zero Trust continues to evolve.
The CSA Zero Trust working group includes hundreds of participants, including myself, who meet regularly to share insights and refine guidance. That environment creates space for ongoing learning and contribution.
It’s how I met Josh Woodruff, a Zero Trust leader who helps companies securely adopt agentic AI based on Zero Trust principles. I even wrote the foreword of his recent book, Agentic AI + Zero Trust: A Guide for Business Leaders.
Participation in the working group is open to a wide range of experience levels. You don’t need to be an expert to contribute. Please consider joining this journey with us.
Closing the gap between Zero Trust strategy and execution
Zero Trust has become a central part of modern security strategy. Organizations are investing in it, measuring it, and expecting outcomes from it.
At the same time, many teams are still working to translate the concept into consistent execution.
That challenge makes education and shared understanding more important than ever.
The CCZT helps create that foundation. It gives organizations a way to build alignment across teams and evaluate how well Zero Trust principles are understood.
The pace of change in cybersecurity continues to accelerate. Environments are more complex, and attackers move faster. That reality increases the need for clarity and consistency in how security is designed and implemented.
A strong foundation in Zero Trust provides a way to meet that challenge with discipline and confidence.
STATSHOT
Adoption Divide
Segmentation is widespread, but the methods vary — and not all of them are created equal. Most teams still rely on network-based tools like firewalls, with software-based options for hybrid and multi-cloud environments not far behind. Hypervisor and host-based methods trail in usage, deployed mostly for specific workloads. Nearly everyone says they segment their environment. But few do it in ways built for modern threats.
