Brenda Marie Rivers
Cisco executives Walter Maikish and Doug Cowan have said complying with a set of continuous diagnostics and mitigation guidelines from the Department of Homeland Security could help agencies establish a security posture to support hybrid cloud computing environments.
“The CDM adoption guidelines highlight what agency IT teams should keep in mind when setting up a hybrid cloud environment to ensure data can move in a secure manner,” Maikish and Cowan worte in a joint guest piece published Monday on GCN.
They said government information technology teams should first identify the high-value assests and users that the cloud will serve in order to identify security strategies and protocols to be implemented.
Organizations must also have a knowledge of how data and workloads flow across the network in order to achieve full network visibility, according to the two Cisco executives.
“Applications are the lifeblood of any organization, and visibility into how those applications should run is key,” they said.
The last step in CDM adoption involves identifying cyber risks, prioritizing each risk and deploying the necessary security tools.
Maikish and Cowan noted that automation will help an agency create consistency in network security posture.
“Knowing what’s on the network, how it’s being used and by whom is essential before security protocols for a hybrid cloud environment can be correctly set up.”
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Maikish serves as civilian operations director at Cisco while Cowan is the company’s federal security manager.
