Lifting and Shifting Yesterday’s Cybersecurity into The Cloud Is Tomorrow’s Adversary Attack Vector

This presentation includes an interactive demo to describe the core elements necessary to achieve a zero-trust architecture, and how those core composable elements protect joint and coalition military operations. The Department of Defense is leveraging Cloud Service Providers (CSP) to embrace the “perimeterless” cybersecurity of a zero-trust architecture.  Modern zero-trust architectures must be designed, deployed and operated in a manner that keeps pace with the ever-changing threat landscape. Security offerings face the perils of keeping pace with the threat or perishing as a viable solution. The composable architecture of the CSPs allows for flexibility and rapid innovation. The stakes are even higher when lifting and shifting traditional perimeter-based security approaches into the cloud. Legacy security is typically tightly integrated and monolithic; therefore, a lift-and-shift approach is often the only option. Failing to adequately secure cloud-based infrastructure exposes organizations to data loss, denial of service, and potential mission failure. A new approach that focuses on securely connecting any user, device, applications, or data to any cloud-based resource, and in contested environments is needed.

The interactive portion of the presentation will include four use-case based scenarios:

1. A zero day will wreck your day: this demonstration shows how zero trust principles allow for continuing cyber operations while under attack in a contested environment.
2. Network security is easy when users and applications are not on the network: this demo demonstrates the value of moving from a network-centric security model to an operator-centric security model. This approach allows for the multiple coalition and joint networks to just provide transport but are not the foundation for cybersecurity.
3. Privilege Remote Access for Dummies: this demo demonstrates how elevated privileges can be granted and managed in a way that does not result in losing access to critical infrastructure.
4. The adversary will not wait for us to build a coalition network: the final demonstration shows the value in implementing zero trust principles to make access to coalition data by connecting coalition partners, not by building a coalition network.