DOD Details Zero Trust Overlays Plan to Aid Zero Trust Implementation

The Department of Defense has released the “Zero Trust Overlays” document, a road map detailing its strategy to meet goals set by the Biden administration’s executive order on the safe development and deployment of artificial intelligence. 

Randy Resnick, the department’s chief zero trust officer, said that the overlays will help risk management professionals at the DOD implement zero trust objectives to ensure adversaries cannot easily infiltrate networks. 

Zero trust requires users on a network to authenticate themselves upon logging in and whenever they access any document, file or subsystem hosted on the network, Defense .gov reported.

Will Schmitt, a division chief within the Pentagon’s Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office, said that the overlays also create a standard for how the department implements zero trust across the organization.

Zero trust implementation is among the Defense Department’s priorities amid the growing number of cyberattacks targeting the United States. In May 2023, DOD Chief Information Security Officer David McKeown suggested using automation tools to help accelerate the zero trust architecture rollout.