Much ink has been spilled about how Zero Trust is a framework and a mindset, not a product. There’s no single solution that “achieves” Zero Trust for federal agencies. Security products can help organisations meet Zero Trust requirements, but Zero Trust is not something that can simply be purchased or completed through a checklist.
The need for this mindset is becoming increasingly urgent in India. A recent report by Lisianthus Tech found that India’s cyber threat landscape recorded more than 265 million cyberattack attempts and 369 million malware detections during the assessment period, highlighting the growing risks facing businesses, citizens, critical infrastructure and government systems. As India’s digital ecosystem expands across cloud, hybrid environments and increasingly connected infrastructure, organisations need security approaches that can continuously assess what is happening across progressively complex environments.
Zero Trust happens when organisations recognise that traditional assumptions of trust no longer work and respond accordingly.
Observability is the foundation of zero trust
Traditional monitoring tracks whether a network is up or down. Observability asks why something is happening and what could happen next. It brings together metrics, logs, traces and events across the technology stack, correlates them, and can use AI and machine learning to identify anomalies and anticipate potential threats.
This is not a nice-to-have with Zero Trust; it’s the foundation on which its controls depend. Least-privilege access cannot be enforced effectively without knowing what users and devices are accessing. Lateral movement cannot be detected without visibility into network behaviour. Devices cannot be verified if they have not been accurately identified and inventoried.
Every zero trust pillar, like users, devices, networks, applications, and data, requires real-time visibility. This is particularly relevant for Indian organisations operating across data centres, public and private clouds, branch offices, remote workforces, and increasingly distributed digital environments.
The more distributed the environment becomes, the more difficult it is to secure through isolated tools and perimeter-based controls. Observability provides the common operating picture required to understand these environments in real time.
How organisations can make Zero Trust work
The organisations that make meaningful progress on Zero Trust do not necessarily begin with the newest infrastructure. They begin with visibility, analytics and a clear understanding of their environment. From there, they build out their Zero Trust roadmap in phases:
- See everything by mapping every device, user, endpoint, and connection, and establishing an authoritative inventory and baseline behavior.
- Centralize identity and implement strong identity and access management (IAM) with single sign-on, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and risk-based access for every access request.
- Segment and contain by using visibility to establish micro-segmentation and network segmentation, limit the blast radius of an incident, and slow lateral movement.
- Automate response whenever the platform detects an anomaly.
Technology and strategy alone, however, will not close the security gap. Legacy infrastructure, procurement cycles, fragmented ownership, and organisational resistance can all delay modernisation. These are ultimately leadership and operational challenges. Without visibility, organisations cannot determine which risks matter most or where investment should be prioritised.
An operating doctrine
The hardest part about zero trust comes when digital operations extend beyond the traditional enterprise boundary. In India, this includes distributed workforces, branch locations, cloud workloads, connected devices and critical infrastructure operating under different connectivity and risk conditions.
The principle remains the same everywhere. Trust should never be assumed, access should be continuously evaluated, and security should extend wherever the organisation operates.
India’s information security spending is projected to reach $3.4 billion in 2026, recording a 11.7% increase, according to Gartner. The growth reflects increasing investment in security software, services, and infrastructure as organisations respond to AI-driven threats and regulatory requirements. The objective, however, should not simply be to spend more on security. It should be to build a security architecture capable of making those investments work together.
Zero Trust is therefore not a destination; it’s a doctrine that depends on continuous visibility, informed decision-making, and the ability to act on what the organisation can see. Observability makes that possible at scale.
