Zero trust is not a product you buy. It is a change in assumption: no user, device or service is trusted just because it is inside the network.
For engineering leaders, the practical shift is continuous verification, least privilege and complete audit trails. Identity becomes the control plane. Lateral movement becomes hard by default.
Start with the paths that touch money, health data or production access. Then expand. A partial, enforced zero-trust program beats a slide deck that covers everything and changes nothing.