The central premise of Office of Management and Budget Memo 22-09 laying out the Federal Zero Trust Strategy is that no actor, system, network, or service operating outside or within the security perimeter is trusted. Controlling access is everything. This makes defining identity crucial – not just for people, but for every device of any kind that tries to access an agency system. The strongest form of identity management is attribute-ba...

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Memorandum M-22-09 requires “agencies to achieve specific zero trust security goals” and designates “Identity” as the first of five pillars from CISA’s zero trust maturity model. Additionally, M-22-09 provides specific actions for the Identity pillar that include, employing centralized identity management systems that integrate with agency applications and platforms; leveragin...

As agencies move to implement a zero trust architecture, the dispersed nature of their cloud-based and hybrid networks means more attention than ever must be paid to the security of Active Directory (AD), which administrators use to manage permissions and access to network resources by far-flung endpoints. Attackers can gain unauthorized access to a company’s data if Active Directory is compromised; monitoring your AD will help protect s...

The cybersecurity slogan for zero trust is a simple one: Never trust, always verify. States, localities, tribes and territories face the same cyber threats as the federal government, and many of their agencies are wrestling through how they can implement zero trust architectures. One of the most important elements in pursuing zero trust is implementing microsegmentation — partitioning a network into small, isolated sections to reduce the...

Blackwood has assembled a comprehensive zero-trust environment used to architect, integrate, test, and deploy numerous technologies aimed at aligning with zero-trust frameworks and methodologies. In partnership with ATARC, Blackwood has demonstrated comprehensive coverage of the various scenarios established by the Zero-Trust Working Group.

One of the foundational tenets of zero trust architecture is Identity – providing credentials for every person and device – in order to manage access to government systems, whether entering from the outside or moving laterally from within. In other words, identity, credential and access management (ICAM) should be addressed as a whole, not as separate point solutions. This applies across all systems, all platforms, and all environm...

As State and Local agencies pursue their zero trust goals taking into consideration the Executive Order 14028, “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity,” it is easy to focus on technology solutions. But that overlooks something fundamental about both the challenge and the purpose of moving to zero trust – the human beings that will use the redesigned systems to better meet their agency’s mission. If a zero-trust impl...

Join Top Leaders from the Public and Private Sectors in Cybersecurity The 14th Annual Billington Cybersecurity Summit will take place September 5–8, 2023, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. With the unique educational mission of convening the who's who in cybersecurity, this annual event brings together senior leadership from the U.S. government and our allied partners along with their industr...

When the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released its Zero Trust Maturity Model Version 2.0 in April, it identified access management as a core function within the Identity Pillar. Identity is the very first of five such pillars, and brings the need for privileged access management into clear focus. Identity is defined by CISA as “an attribute or set of attributes that uniquely describes an agency user or entity,...

ATARC’s Zero Trust Integration Lab (ZTIL) aims to showcase technical architectures and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) hardware and software solutions, support proofs of concept for integrated solution sets by incorporating multiple vendors’ products, and implement Zero Trust solutions in a simulated production environment. Each demonstration team will address all aspects of Zero Trust in a provided scenario set crossing all...