John Zangardi, CEO of Redhorse and a 2023 Wash100 Award winner, said it is imperative for federal agencies looking to transition to zero trust architecture to develop complete visibility into their information technology systems.
Zangardi wrote in a May 17 commentary published on Federal News Network that there are five steps agencies should consider when adopting zero trust and the first is forming a team to help conceptualize and establish a ZTA implementation plan.
Agencies should have a better understanding of their workflows and data application services and conduct research into organizations that have implemented ZTA.
“Learn how other agencies or organizations with similar missions, IT architectures and information flows have approached ZTA and learn from their successes and failures,” Zangardi noted.
He called on agencies to choose technology platforms that provide accurate visibility into all networks, devices, applications, clouds and workloads and those that enable them to develop real-time situational awareness of operations occurring on the network.
The last two steps Zangardi suggested are launching initiatives and setting goals and objectives within an agency and adapting ZTA to new use cases.