Federal CIO Council Working on Zero Trust Implementation

The Federal Chief Information Officer Council‘s Interagency Zero Trust Leadership Steering Group is focusing its efforts on identifying the challenges that federal agencies face as they implement zero trust security architectures.

Speaking at the ATARC Zero Trust Summit, Sean Connelly, the manager of the Trusted Internet Connections 3.0 program, shared that the council is looking at how agencies move forward as they receive funding for their zero-trust implementation efforts.

Funding has been a concern for CIOs and chief information security officers ever since President Joe Biden signed his cybersecurity executive order, which includes a requirement for agencies to submit zero trust architecture implementation plans, FedScoop reported.

Some of the vehicles that agencies are looking at for zero trust implementation are the Technology Modernization Fund, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency‘s Federal High-Value Asset program and TIC 3.0. The Federal High-Value Asset program helps agencies protect sensitive data while TIC 3.0 provides security architectures for IT environments through use cases that complement zero trust.

In addition to funding concerns, the U.S. government is also working to ensure that zero trust implementation issues are addressed. CISA is working with the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Digital Service to review federal agencies’ zero trust implementation plans and identify what aspects they need to work on.

They are also looking at cybersecurity-related challenges across organizations.

Information gathered from the inter-agency work is shared with the CISA-hosted CyberStat working groups, which meet monthly to discuss the implementation of the pillars of zero trust: identity, devices, networks, applications and workloads, and data.