Arthur McMiler
Dell Technologies is preparing government and private sector availability of its Project Fort Zero on-premises private cloud cybersecurity platform following its validation under the Department of Defense’s Zero Trust Reference Architecture, or ZTRA, standards. “Dell has laid the groundwork for a turnkey zero trust solution that global organizations can look forward to leveraging the moment it’s deployed,” Herb Kelsey, the company’s industry chief technology officer, government, said in a Dell statement Wednesday.
Within Project Fort Zero is an “ecosystem of partners” that replicates the technology integration of the DOD zero trust architecture, the Dell executive added.
Continuous Security Verification in a Simplified Process
According to the company, a DOD third-party assessment was conducted to test Project Fort Zero’s capability to repel sophisticated cyberattacks. The platform executed all the security controls required under the DOD’s validation target level for a sovereign, on-premises private cloud, Dell noted.
The company’s cybersecurity platform provides a complete zero trust architecture is designed to simplify its process by integrating various tools and controls from the start. The simplified process overcomes the constraints of point-specific cybersecurity system, enabling continuous users and resources verification starting at the outset of the platform’s operation, Dell explained.
Complementary Zero Trust Center of Excellence
Project Fort Zero was launched in Dell’s Technologies World event in 2023, with the goal of providing an end-to-end system with ready-to-use features and applying all 45 capabilities and 152 activities defined in the DOD’s ZTRA. In October 2022, the Roundrock, Texas-based company launched its Zero Trust Center of Excellence offering customers a blueprint on a DOD-approved architecture for cybersecurity system testing before platform deployment.
Dell is also one of nine organizations that the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence has selected to participate in a project seeking to address challenges associated with DevOps and software supply chain security. The initiative seeks the implementation of DevSecOps practices to proof-of-concept use-case scenarios, which could organizations’ efforts on identifying and mitigating supply chain cybersecurity risks.
