Implementing a zero-trust security model has never been easy, according to
Andrew Young, chief product officer and senior vice president of product at
WatchGuard Technologies.
It’s often disruptive to business operations, is cost-, resource-, and operation-intensive, and typically requires stitching together separate identity, endpoint, network, and access tools that weren’t designed to work together, Young told MSSP Alert. Factor in operational friction, inconsistent enforcement, and blind spots open to attackers targeting identities and endpoints, and the challenge for organizations and service providers is steep.
It’s even tougher for SMBs.
“Small and medium-sized businesses are even more exposed,” he said. “Most lack the resources or bandwidth to assemble the pieces required for zero trust and are already stretched thin just keeping their operations afloat, making them especially vulnerable to the next wave of agentic, AI-driven attacks.”
Zero Trust in a Bundle
Seattle-based WatchGuard wants to make putting a zero-trust architecture in place easier and less painful. This week, the company introduced its Zero Trust Bundle, an offering that includes a myriad capabilities needed – identity, endpoint, access, and network tools – into a single framework.
“WatchGuard’s Zero Trust Bundle isn’t a brand-new architecture; it’s the realization of an approach we have been building toward for years,” Young said. “The Zero Trust Bundle brings together identity confidence, device integrity, and secure access into a single, cloud-delivered architecture. What we’re delivering now is the ability to put all those pieces together with a single agent and a continuously validating Zero Trust Control Plane that makes this architecture real and accessible.”
This is especially true for small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) and the MSSPs and MSPs they rely on for security, he said, adding that “we’ve known for a long time that they needed a unified, purpose-built path to zero trust. The Zero Trust Bundle dramatically reduces operational overhead and allows zero trust to be deployed in real environments, without enterprise-grade complexity.”
Security for a Connected, Cloudy World
Zero trust is a rapidly growing and crowded space. Analysts with Fortune Business Insights expect the global market to grow from $42.28 billion this year to
$124.5 billion by 2032. The zero-trust concept is built on the idea that no user or device is trusted by default. Instead, they need to be validated before being allowed to access corporate networks or applications.
It’s a departure from the perimeter security frameworks that historically were used.
“Hybrid work, cloud apps, and constant connectivity have completely reshaped how people get things done,”
Bill Munroe, head of product marketing at WatchGuard,
wrote in a blog post. “But they've also reshaped how attackers operate. Today, most breaches begin with fundamental issues: stolen credentials, compromised devices, or remote access tools that weren't designed for a world of distributed users.”
It's being
embraced by a broad array of firms, from
CrowdStrike and
Palo Alto Networks to
Zscaler,
Okta, and
Cloudflare.
All-in-One
WatchGuard’s Zero Trust Bundle differs from other vendors’ approaches, Young said, noting that they often focus on a single domain, access, endpoint, or cloud security, which still requires organizations and MSPs to integrate multiple vendors to ensure full zero trust coverage.
“WatchGuard’s approach is different because our Zero Trust Bundle is part of a broader, built-from-the-ground-up architecture that unifies identity security, device trust, FireCloud’s cloud-delivered ZTNA [zero trust network access], SWG [secure web gateway], and FWaaS [firewall-as-a-service], and, uniquely, traditional perimeter firewalls within the same control plane,” he said. “Other vendors cannot offer that hybrid model.”
Included in the bundle are WatchGuard’s AuthPoint Total Identity Security, such as adaptive multifunction authentication (MFA), single sign-on (SSO), risk scoring, and dark web credential monitoring, its AI-powered EDPR (endpoint protection, detection, and response) for detecting and addressing malware, and recently launched FireCloud Total Access capabilities, with FWaaS, SWG, and ZTNA replacing VPNs and offering fast and context-aware access.
“We coded these capabilities ourselves, so they work natively together, allowing customers to implement zero trust across both cloud and on-prem environments without sacrifice,” Young said. “This gives SMEs and MSPs a complete, flexible zero-trust foundation they can deploy quickly and scale efficiently, supported by integrated enforcement across every layer of their security posture.”
Served on a Platform
The Zero Trust Bundle also dovetails with the cybersecurity industry trend toward tightly integrated platforms rather than point products that have to be brought together by security teams, which is good for service providers and organizations alike.
“A unified platform is what allows MSPs to deliver zero trust as a profitable service to the SME market, something that has not been possible with fragmented point solutions,” he said. “By centralizing operations through unified identity, device, and network controls backed by [WatchGuard’s] ThreatSync XDR [extended detection and response], MSPs get shared telemetry, consistent policy enforcement, faster containment, and a single operational model that reduces misconfigurations and speeds up response times.”
For security teams, continuous verification shifts from a manual effort into an automated process, Young added.
WatchGuard’s Munroe wrote that “zero trust isn't a trend: it's becoming the foundation of modern cybersecurity. ... Whether your team is fully remote, hybrid, or office-based, zero trust makes every connection safer, every device more trustworthy, and every workday more secure. Security shouldn't slow you down.”
