We all read the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity when it came out. It was great at telling federal technology leaders “what.” Unfortunately, it was not too detailed on “how.” Today’s discussion gives the listener a fantastic dose of practical applications.

We have tech visionaries from the DoD, CISA, GSA, and CrowdStrike. They offer suggestions based on years of federal experience. The discussion ranges from gap analysis to prioritize needs to the evolution of the Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) from 1.0 to 3.0.  Further, an analysis is given of the progress of agencies on incorporating point of a reference architecture to specific recommendations for the DoD to comply with zero trust.

Kevin Gallo gives an overview of TIC. Initially, its goal was to limit the number of connections a federal agency had to outside sources. Since its inception in 2007, the federal government has seen an explosion in endpoints and cloud services. As a result, some view TIC 3.0 has a distributed cybersecurity policy enforcement tool.

Speaking of the multiplicity of clouds, there are so many moving parts that any solution must include the ability to interconnect with many systems. Ned Miller from CrowdStrike talks about the millions of endpoints CrowdStrike has already secured in an incredibly complex system.

For civilian agencies, the GSA is offering a Buyer’s Guide that can assist leaders in assessing offerings that can lead to a stable zero-trust architecture. Additionally, they offer free workshops on implementing Zero Trust where hundreds of federal technical people have participated.

From the DoD Randy Resnik gives the listener a detailed description of the 45 capabilities and the 151 activities that must be accomplished before an effective deployment of Zero Trust can be accomplished.

If that is not a full plate, the interview ends with a serious overview of threat hunting. Perhaps this august group and meet again and provide more details on this important topic.