How To Enhance And Secure Cloud Communications Between Government Agencies

The May 2021 release of Executive Order 14028, Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, the growing attack surface due to cloud adoption, and the January 2022 Federal Zero Trust memorandum have all added urgency to the federal government’s move to implement better network security through solutions based in Zero Trust architecture. With initiatives such as the Cloud Smart strategy and agencies like the IRS making commitments to a “cloud first” roadmap, progress is being made to enhance and secure cloud communications between agencies and mission partners. Lamont Copeland, Director of Federal Solutions Architecture at Verizon, explained that “it’s moving the security infrastructure and the footprint that we have to protect closer to the end user, and at the same time further away from the operational base.” With devices ranging from building security cameras and HVAC systems to remote workforce and facility IoT devices, applications and data that once sat isolated in a remote repository are now traveling along the same connections as other systems, significantly expanding the attack surface vulnerable to a security breach.