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Zero Trust: More than just a Buzzword

Harvey Morrison

In May of 2021, the White House released Executive Order 14028 (Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity | The White House) entitled "Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity". This Executive Order was released in response to the Solar Winds attack and directs agencies to migrate to a Zero Trust security architecture by the of FY 2024.

We are highlighting Zero Trust and the executive order for our clients at Marion Square for a couple of key reasons:

Funding- Zero Trust programs are being funded across most of the Federal Governments agencies and departments, both Civilian Fed and DoD. Doing a bit of research our analysts uncovered several 2023 budgets requests that specifically state Zero Trust:

Compelling Event- the Executive Order states "Agencies must adopt Zero Trust approaches and capabilities by the end of FY 2024"

So what is Zero Trust? What are the types of technologies and capabilities the Government is seeking to achieve their Zero Trust objectives? A great piece of background for all things Zero Trust inside of the Federal Government is the NIST whitepaper- NIST Special Publication 800-207 (Zero Trust Architecture (nist.gov).

NIST defines Zero Trust as, an evolving set of cybersecurity paradigms that move defenses from static, network-based perimeters to focus on users, assets, and resources. A Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) uses zero trust principles to plan industrial and enterprise infrastructure and workflows. Zero trust assumes that there is no implicit trust granted to assets or user accounts based solely on their physical or network location (local area network vs the internet) or based on asset ownership (enterprise or personally owned). Authentication and authorization (both subject and device) are discrete functions performed before a session to an enterprise resource is established. Zero trust is a response to enterprise network trends that include remote users, BYOD, and cloud based assets that are not located within and enterprise owned network boundary. Zero trust focuses on protecting resources (assets, services, workflows, network accounts, etc.) not network segments, as the network location is not longer seen as the prime component to the security posture of the resources.

What technologies are potentially included in a Zero Trust Architecture? GSA has established 7 pillars or categories that must be addressed for Zero Trust. (*Zero Trust Architecture Buyers Guide v11 20210610 (2).pdf)

  • User- identity, authentication, access policy controls

  • Device- able to determine posture and trustworthiness

  • Network- dynamic defending capabilities, micro-segmentation, control network flows while encrypting end to end traffic

  • Infrastructure- ability to protect systems and services within a workloads against unintended and unauthorized access.

  • Application- can integrate user, device, and data components to secure access to the application layer. Ability to security wrap each workload to prevent data collection, unauthorized access or tampering

  • Data- focus on securing and enforcing access to data based on the data's categorization and classification to isolate the data from everyone except those that need access.

  • Visibility and Analytics- provide insights into user and system behavior analytics by observing real-time communications between all Zero Trust components

  • Orchestration and Automation- automates security and network operational processes

If your technology fits into any of the 7 pillars outlined above, now is the time to begin reaching out to Federal agencies and educating them on where your solutions fits inside of a Zero Trust Architecture. Many of the budget requests being made are for FY 2023, which begins in Oct of 2022, with that many of these agencies have market research initiatives already underway.

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