The Defense Innovation Unit will pilot a secure cloud management solution that may eventually provide zero-trust access to about 500,000 concurrent Pentagon users, after announcing Zscaler as the provider Monday.
Zero trust narrows cyberdefenses from wide network perimeters to micro-perimeters around individual or small groups of IT assets, and the Silicon Valley-based DIU aims to accelerate its adoption across the Department of Defense. Zscaler, also based in California, specializes in doing that work for cloud environments.
The prototype will allow DIU users to directly access the internet and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications in Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure while they are operating off-network, regardless of their location or device. Zscaler will change the way those users access their workflows.
“It’s completely different from the way they’re doing business today. What we can provide is secure cloud management solutions for government,” said Drew Schnabel, vice president of federal at Zscaler, in the announcement. “The way they’re doing it today, they’re basically accessing applications via virtual private network (VPN). They’re inherent with security vulnerabilities.”
DIU did not comment in time for publication.
Zscaler and more than 30 other vendors responded to DIU’s November request for solution briefs on prototypes for a next-generation cloud access point. In March, Google, McAfee and Zscaler solutions were selected for piloting — with Zscaler’s assignment changed to secure cloud management.
“It’s not a bakeoff at all,” Schnabel said. “All of them ..
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