Zscaler’s Patrick Perry: Agencies Need Zero-Trust, Cloud-Based Enterprise IT Approach to Telework

Patrick Perry, director of emerging technology for federal, defense and intelligence community at Zscaler, has said that agencies must consider various factors in cloud implementation as remote work becomes ubiquitous.

In an opinion piece published Tuesday on GCN, Perry wrote that agencies must first determine the cost of data management from on-premises and cloud environments.

He added that agencies must aim for flexibility in cloud infrastructures, consider enterprise information technology as-a-service options and focus on simplifying security infrastructure while ensuring an agile and scalable hybrid cloud architecture.

Agencies must also learn to adopt new data security concepts such as zero-trust architecture and  “secure access service edge” that transition the focus of cybersecurity from networks to data, said Perry.

According to Perry, the Department of Defense’s efforts to outsource workload processing to industry through as-a-service approaches enable it to keep pace with the private sector and ensure productivity as well as efficiency.

“As defense and civilian agencies adopt multi- and hybrid-cloud environments, they should consider an as-a-service model for many aspects of their environment with zero trust network access as their foundation for secure access,” he noted.