Beth Cappello, acting chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said cloud has played a key role in helping DHS ensure continuity of operations during the coronavirus pandemic, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

“So when I, when I think about where we are right now, those situations where my predecessors had migrated workloads to the cloud infrastructure and had put in additional capability, that’s all paying dividends for DHS and our ability to continue operations right now,” she said during a recent SNG Live virtual event. 

DHS has more than 70,000 employees teleworking on a daily basis and Cappello said the cloud’s scalability and flexibility helped telecommuting possible. Cappello highlighted the importance of Trusted Internet Connections 3.0 and shared her insights on DHS’ approach to zero trust.

“And I think that’s going to change dramatically the way that we approach security, right, as we do enhanced cloud adoption and we’re looking at the different ways to use these technologies, wherever we are,” she said of zero trust. “We’re going to have to be more mindful of the security architectures and they have to change to keep up."