Illumio CTO Sees Opportunities to Improve Government Cloud Security

Gary Barlet, the federal chief technology officer for Illumio, said the 17th Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act scorecard presents opportunities to improve cloud security in various government agencies.

FITARA 17.0 showed that agencies’ ratings have dropped, mainly due to the addition of a new cloud security category covering the implementation of best practices for migrating workloads and services to the cloud.

Cloud environments are attractive targets for malicious cyber actors because 98 percent of all organizations keep their most sensitive data in the cloud, Barlet said in a commentary Federal News Network published.

To improve cloud security, the Illumio CTO recommended gaining end-to-end visibility across hybrid IT environments, continuous monitoring of workloads, operating cloud environments with a mindset that cyberattacks are inevitable and adopting a proactive approach to mitigating the impact of security incidents on critical assets and operations.

Barlet noted that network segmentation, combined with a zero trust approach, is an effective tool to limit an attack’s lateral movement.