Page 33 - Cyber Defense eMagazine August 2023

While making this progress, agencies must understand the impact a successful zero trust process can
have on data and the future of government decision-making. There are also key strategies and data
governance policies that agencies can implement to abide by the CISA guidelines and find achievable
solutions for a zero trust future.

How Agencies Can Safeguard Their Data

The updated ZTMM from CISA claims that agency data should be protected on devices, in applications,
and on networks in accordance with federal requirements, and that agencies should inventory,
categorize, and label data; protect data at rest and in transit; and deploy mechanisms to detect and stop
data exfiltration.

Zero trust is all about enhancing your security posture. The balancing act of security and accessibility is
possible through platforms that can operate independently from compute and storage layers which offer
integrated security and governance based on metadata. The ideal zero trust approach will contain a data
security platform capable of contextualizing across analytics and cloud environments while simplifying
data delivery and access with a unified multi-tenant model.

Ultimately, the approach of utilizing a secure platform to assist with zero trust will result in reduced
cybersecurity risk and operational costs, all while allowing faster deployment of governed and secured
data lakes for broader responsibly safeguarded data access.

Role of Data in the Zero Trust Journey

With data as one of the five main pillars of the ZTMM, it is critical that DOD moves to optimal maturity to
properly secure our nation’s data and privacy. The DOD has already shared various plans and guidelines
that focus heavily on data protection and management, so movement to an optimal zero trust position
greatly aligns.

Therefore, implementing the ZTMM will eliminate unauthorized access by bad actors and safeguard data
from non-trusted sources. This is essential as data continues to play a key role in the federal
government’s mission-critical operations. The optimal maturity of zero trust will better position defense
agencies to protect their essential data, ranging from citizen services to military intelligence; all
government data will be protected and safeguarded.

Proper Governance Supports the Trek to Optimal

Governance is a need as CISA also stated that agencies should carefully craft and review data
governance policies to ensure all data lifecycle security aspects are appropriately enforced across the
enterprise. When you have proper governance with zero trust, it frees up the data so you can share it
effectively within the organization. The data is protected and highly accessible by the team members who
need it most.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – August 2023 Edition 33
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