Articles

OMB issues zero-trust strategy for federal agencies

All federal agencies must meet zero-trust goals that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget has set by 2024, building on earlier federal cybersecurity initiatives.

Through a memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Biden administration issued a 30-page strategy to move the U.S. government toward a zero trust approach to cybersecurity. The strategy “represents a key step forward” in delivering on the president’s sweeping May executive order (EO) on cybersecurity, which contains a directive for federal government agencies to develop a plan to advance towards a zero trust architecture.

A hot buzz phrase in the cybersecurity world, zero trust is a model premised on the notion of “never trust, always verify.” The executive order defines zero trust as a security concept that “eliminates implicit trust in any one element, node, or service and instead requires continuous verification of the operational picture via real-time information from multiple sources to determine access and other system responses.” OMB says that a “key tenet of a zero trust architecture is that no network is implicitly considered trusted.”

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

 

Articles

Federal agencies face new zero-trust cybersecurity requirements

The OMB and CISA issue guidance to move all federal agencies to a shared zero-trust maturity model for FY22-24. The catch: No new funding.

As part of the Biden administration’s wide-ranging cybersecurity executive order (EO) issued in May, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued three documents on zero trust last week. Zero trust is a security concept that “eliminates implicit trust in any one element, node, or service and instead requires continuous verification of the operational picture via real-time information from multiple sources to determine access and other system responses,” according to the EO.

From a cybersecurity practitioner’s perspective, zero trust is a security approach that, among other things, relies on stringent authentication and authorization processes to give users needed access to digital assets but in constrained ways that limit damage when a breach or compromise occurs. The EO repeatedly references zero trust and directs CISA and OMB to develop initiatives to incorporate zero-trust cybersecurity security models throughout the federal government.

The documents released last week offer draft versions of these models. CISA and OMB call them “strategic and technical guidance documents meant to move the US government towards a zero-trust architecture.”

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

Photo by Laura Heimann on Unsplash

Articles

Federal agencies face new zero-trust cybersecurity requirements

The OMB and CISA issue guidance to move all federal agencies to a shared zero-trust maturity model for FY22-24. The catch: No new funding.

As part of the Biden administration’s wide-ranging cybersecurity executive order (EO) issued in May, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued three documents on zero trust last week. Zero trust is a security concept that “eliminates implicit trust in any one element, node, or service and instead requires continuous verification of the operational picture via real-time information from multiple sources to determine access and other system responses,” according to the EO.

From a cybersecurity practitioner’s perspective, zero trust is a security approach that, among other things, relies on stringent authentication and authorization processes to give users needed access to digital assets but in constrained ways that limit damage when a breach or compromise occurs. The EO repeatedly references zero trust and directs CISA and OMB to develop initiatives to incorporate zero-trust cybersecurity security models throughout the federal government.

The documents released last week offer draft versions of these models. CISA and OMB call them “strategic and technical guidance documents meant to move the US government towards a zero-trust architecture.”

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

Photo by Laura Heimann on Unsplash