Zero Trust Architecture and Organisational Cybersecurity Resilience: Critical Conceptual Review

Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) is increasingly proposed as an alternative to security models that grant implicit trust on the basis of network location. However, architectural adoption does not itself demonstrate an organisation's ability to withstand, contain and recover from cyber incidents. This critical conceptual review examines how continuous identity verification, least-privilege access control, continuous security monitoring and network micro-segmentation may contribute to organisational cybersecurity resilience. A purposive review of fourteen scholarly, technical and practitioner sources distinguishes architectural reasoning, implementation guidance, deployment experience and bounded technical evaluation. The synthesis finds a coherent rationale for restricting access, reducing privilege exposure, improving actionable detection and limiting movement across resources. Evidence for these mechanisms is stronger than evidence for a uniform causal improvement in organisational resilience. Implementation fidelity, reliable identity and asset information, staff capability, governance and incident-response capacity shape whether intended controls become effective protection. Recovery also depends on complementary restoration arrangements that access control cannot supply alone. The article develops five propositions, an operationalisation matrix and a conceptual framework for future organisational research. It recommends service-based scoping, accountable policy ownership, staged deployment, documented exceptions and evaluation using both security outcomes and operational consequences. The review concludes that ZTA should be assessed through coverage, functioning and measurable service outcomes rather than a binary adoption label. Its findings are conceptual and do not represent new participant data, a meta-analysis or demonstrated causal effects in Uganda.