Welcome to our featured blog series dedicated to exploring the critical realm of endpoint security in the Federal Government. Endpoint security plays a pivotal role in protecting sensitive government data, maintaining the integrity of critical systems, and ensuring the confidentiality of classified information. With cyber threats becoming more sophisticated and persistent, it is imperative that government agencies employ robust measures to fortify their endpoints against potential vulnerabilities and attacks.
At the end of the day, protecting the endpoint all boils down to protecting availability of services and confidentiality of information. Yet there are many challenges when it comes to securing these through endpoints such as devices, laptops, desktops, and more. While controls such as multi-factor authentication, anti-malware, and ransomware detection are important for mitigation, they are often complex and can be cumbersome to the end user. That’s why any endpoint security and risk mitigation strategy should aim not to overload end users with security requirements while still enabling them to operate in a secure environment.
This balance is a central tenet of Zero Trust. The advent of Zero Trust and the latest Zero Trust Strategy for DoD and across the Federal Government establish a common mandate helping everyone drive towards the same goal. Having a cross-government approach will be important in ensuring all agencies realize their Zero Trust plans and strategies.
While each plan will be nuanced depending on individual agencies, there are six key cyber domains federal agencies need to consider when securing their endpoints from cloud to edge:
1. Supply chain trust: You need visibility into what software and hardware you have and how it’s being deployed in an agency so you can adequately protect it. Ultimately, supply chain comes down to understanding your existing vulnerabilities and implementing mitigation controls.
2. Host security: Be it the user’s laptop or servers in the data center or even the cloud, you must be able to vet and attest to the security of the host. This informs everything that runs your enterprise as well as the networks and connectivity between the systems.
3. Network security: Zero Trust is driving better network segmentation where users must re-authenticate before they access the next segment. An end user is not trusted forever once authorized in the network. You need to segment your network so you can isolate segments from each other, whether they be different application domains or the branch office vs. the home office. With segmentation, Zero Trust enables you to apply more granular policies.
4. Application and data security: Data is the new oil. At the end of the day, you’re not trying to protect the system or network as those are simply a means to an end: the data. You must protect data in the full lifecycle- in transit, at rest as well as across all domains. In short, Zero Trust and endpoint security policies need to follow the data.
5. Threat management: Detect anomalous behaviors at scale. Determine “How will I detect new threats? How do I prevent threats and mitigate at scale? How do I vet that my security controls are doing what they need to do?” With Zero Trust, this means continuously monitoring, continuous updating, and real time threat management. Additionally, it means applying risk-based security mitigations at scale.
6. Identity access management: How do you authenticate entities? Zero Trust highlights it’s not just about the users. Entities can include software servers, clients, desktops, IoT devices, and anything or anyone else on the network consuming data and resources. When it comes to the individual, Zero Trust calls for continuously authenticating end users and entities so they only have access to what they’re supposed to.
Ready to take your endpoint security and risk management to the next level? Reach out to see how our team of experts at Iron Bow Technologies and partners like Intel can help.
COMMENTS