David McKeown, acting chief information officer at the Department of Defense, said DOD has been working on plans to facilitate its transition to zero trust by fiscal year 2027 and included in that initiative is the establishment of a zero trust portfolio management office, DOD News reported Monday.
The Pentagon recently unveiled the Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap, which outlines efforts to secure the DOD Information Enterprise by reducing the attack surface, facilitating data sharing and enabling risk management.
“With the publication of this strategy we have articulated the ‘how’ that can address clear outcomes of how to get to zero trust — and not only accelerated technology adoption, as discussed, but also a culture of zero trust at DOD and an integrated approach at the department and the component levels,” McKeown said.
According to the report, DOD expects every agency to achieve target level zero trust compliance as outlined in the roadmap.
“If you’re a national security system, we may require the advanced level for those systems,” McKeown said.
“But advanced really isn’t necessary for literally every system out there. We have an aggressive goal getting to ‘targeted’ by 2027. And we want to encourage those who have a greater need to secure their data to adopt this advanced level,” he added.
