The Pentagon’s senior information security official said today that the Defense Department is on track to implement its zero trust cybersecurity framework by fiscal year 2027 as planned.
David McKeown, who serves as the DOD’s deputy chief information officer as well as the department’s senior information security officer, said his office has been hard at work to ensure a smooth rollout of the initiative after publishing the Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap in November.
He credited partnerships with the private sector as a key enabler of the DOD’s progress toward implementing the key capabilities identified in the roadmap so far.
“We’ve been partnering very heavily with commercial cloud providers, asking them to analyze their offerings, partner with other service provers to try to achieve those 91 capabilities to get us to the target of zero trust,” McKeown said. “Really great relationships are forming there.
“I think we are on a good path for 2027,” he said.
Once implemented, the zero trust framework will move the DOD beyond traditional network security methods with capabilities designed to reduce exposure to cyberattacks, enable risk…
