“With President Biden’s cybersecurity executive order (EO) directing Federal agencies to begin moving to zero trust security architectures, agencies already have begun to make the shift. However, progress on zero trust migration – which some Federal officials termed a ‘paradigm shift’ at an ATARC webinar today – will look different for every agency.
IT officials from the Department of Commerce (Commerce), Department of Interior (DoI), and the National Institute of Health (NIH) explained what that journey is beginning to look like, and how agencies can get as close as possible to 100 percent zero trust…”
“Samuel Michael, the chief of the technological resources branch at NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, said that such a cultural and technological shift could be harder for more mature organizations, but said that it is crucial that organizations understand the importance and necessity of the change.
‘Your organization needs to embrace it across the board, otherwise you’re not going to be successful, Michael said. ‘And it is very difficult to do … especially if you’re supporting legacy systems.’
He compared the resistance to cultural organizational change – like the move to zero trust – to Spanish painter Salvador Dali’s painting of melting clocks, titled the Persistence of Memory, and said the move will take sustained effort and organization-wide buy-in.
‘It’s just incredible how powerful that Persistence of Memory – of what things were – can prevent what things could or should be,’ Michael said. ‘So how do you get that activation energy to get people to think about this in a different way? It really just takes concerted effort but also learning is a process of repetition. Just stay on point and really make sure that you’re constantly taking every opportunity to present on this, even if it’s exhausting, because … without that reinforcement, you just have very little chance of success.’” Read the full article here.
Source: Officials: Move to Zero Trust Will Look Different for Every Agency – By Lamar Johnson, October 14, 2021. MeriTalk.
