Zero Trust Paradigm (ZTP): an advancing approach of cybersecurity in emerging technologies

The continuous growth of digital technologies has increased the exposure of organizations to complex and evolving cyber threats. Traditional perimeter-based security approaches are becoming less effective due to the increasing complexity of modern networks, which now include cloud platforms, connected devices and distributed environments. These changes create significant security challenges, such as unauthorized access, difficulty in verifying users and devices, limited network visibility and increased risks from internal and external threats. To address these challenges, the Zero Trust Paradigm (ZTP) has emerged as a cybersecurity approach based on continuous verification, where no user, device, or application is trusted by default. This paper reviews Zero Trust research published between 2010 and 2026 and examines the development of Zero Trust models across different computing environments. This review explores the application of ZTP in the Internet of Things (IoT), wireless networks (WN), blockchain, cloud computing and quantum computing systems. The analysis of existing studies highlights how Zero Trust supports the protection of critical resources across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and business environments through continuous verification, access control and resource-level protection. Overall, this review discusses implementation practices, existing challenges, research gaps and future directions for adopting Zero Trust in modern cybersecurity infrastructures.