A service mesh like HashiCorp Consul can help strengthen security posture and promote zero trust networking in Kubernetes environments by authorizing, authenticating, and encrypting service-to-service communications. Zero trust security principles require a fundamental shift to architecture, delivering identity-based access, including secret and certificate management, and enabling observability through audits and logging. A service mesh like Consul can provide a management layer that enforces zero trust principles, making it easy to enforce granular security policies in Kubernetes and across multiple environments without requiring extensive coding of security parameters into the application itself.