Federal and public sector IT leaders are adopting Zero Trust or least-privilege security strategies and deploying micro-segmentation as a foundational component in order to keep up with FISMA, NIST, DHS, and OMB mandates to identify their high value assets (HVA), map their dependencies, and take steps to reduce the attack surface via segmentation.
challenge
Government mandates and guidelines such as DHS Binding Operational Directive 16-01 and OMB Memorandum M-17-09 require government IT leaders to identify their HVAs so that they can better understand their risk and vulnerability, and then take steps to reduce their attack surface. To effectively secure HVAs, agencies need to be aware of and have a plan for addressing the following challenges:
- Applications likely run on a combination of legacy infrastructure and new forms of compute and possibly even reside in GovCloud.
- Overheads that stem from managing and scaling VLANs, subnets, and firewall rules.
Solution
To effectively secure HVAs, government IT leaders are shifting their mindset from detection and prevention to containment and remediation – also known as cyber resiliency. The focus is on limiting the ability of bad actors to take advantage of compromised hosts as entry points to traversing the internal network and reaching HVAs. Adopting a Zero Trust security architecture and using micro-segmentation as a foundational component is quickly becoming good hygiene.
The Illumio Adaptive Security Platform® (ASP) offers federal and public sector agencies the following benefits:
