Defense
Navy shifts to zero trust mindset to deal with COVID-related telework
The Navy's top cyber official said he expects the department to move "aggressively" towards a zero trust security model to secure government systems while a critical mass of employees continues work from home and log in from personal devices due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shortly after the virus started spreading across the U.S., the Navy set up an internal collaboration tool called Commercial Virtual Response, according to Chief Information Security Officer Chris Cleary. While operational and classified work was still routed through secure facilities, the tool allowed hundreds of thousands of Navy employees to continue working while under stay-at-home orders by accessing agency information through the cloud on their government, mobile or even personal device.
The tool allowed many projects to continue functioning on the fly and the experience has taught the Navy the value of setting up a new, broader security architecture.
"I think you're going to see the Navy, based on COVID, aggressively pursue zero trust," said Cleary during a July 27 webcast hosted by FireEye. "It was something that was being kicked around as the latest buzzword a year ago, but now it's really moved to the top the stack, principally to enable this telework problem."
Zero trust – a model of cybersecurity built on the assumptions that there is no meaningful network perimeter and that access controls should be tightly regulated and monitored even for high-level employees – has been steadily gaining popularity within private and public sector organizations over the past decade. Government auditors say federal agencies still ..
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