Zero trust: Moving from concept to reality
On the one hand, zero trust security seems simple: Assume compromise and authenticate every action. In practice, though, zero trust can be maddeningly complicated.
A group of security specialists from across government recently met to discuss what's needed to move zero trust into the mainstream, in a roundtable convened by FCW, a sibling site to GCN. The full discussion was on the record but not for individual attribution, and the quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
One of the requirements for zero trust is establishing a baseline of normal application, user and network behavior – a task recently made much more difficult with so many government employees working from home.
"The new normal" has become an overused term since COVID-19 upended workplaces, but several participants said the surge in telework was indeed changing security conversations. "I think it's been a catalyst for people to think about how that strong network perimeter isn't what they thought it was," one said.
New or old, however, establishing what's normal in a network is essential to a zero-trust approach. Location data has changed dramatically in recent months, but multiple officials said defining a baseline is difficult even without maximum telework.
"What is normal will change over time," one said. "Certain changes, while deemed anomalous, could be quite normal in a network. And so this whole idea of understanding patterns and normalcy and looking for anomalies becomes an extremely challenging problem."
Thanks to the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation Program, the 2015 governmentwide "cyber sprint" and recent efforts by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, federal ag ..
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