Microsoft has released new guidance for the Department of Defense (DoD) Zero Trust strategy to adopt a new cybersecurity framework and help customers facilitate informed and risk-based decisions.
With this guidance, users will be able to learn how DoD Components should implement Zero Trust activities using Microsoft cloud services. Specifically, the company stated that the guide scopes features available today (including public preview) for Microsoft 365 DoD and Microsoft Azure Government users.
Among the services mentioned are Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Intune, Github, Microsoft Purview, Azure networking services, Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel.
“Microsoft commends the DoD for approaching Zero Trust as a mindset, not a capability or device that may be bought”, said Steve Faehl, federal security chief technology officer at Microsoft. “Zero Trust can’t be achieved by a single technology but through tight integration between solutions across product categories.”
He added that the guidance will be especially helpful to customers because “deciphering how security products achieve Zero Trust based on marketing materials alone is a daunting task”. It requires IT leaders to select the right tools, security architects to design integrated solutions and implementers to deploy, configure and integrate tools to achieve the outcomes in each activity.
Microsoft also reported that it will continue innovating to meet the needs of federal and DoD customers by releasing updates on such new Zero Trust technologies like Microsoft Copilot for Security and Security Service Edge to United States Government clouds in the future.
Faehl emphasized that the DoD is “embracing Zero Trust as a continuous modernization effort”. This is why Microsoft has partnered with DoD Components for several years, onboarding Microsoft 365 services, integrating apps, migrating workloads, managing devices and building security operations for such solutions as the Flank Speed program for the US Navy and Army 365 for the US Army’s Microsoft 365 environment.
Microsoft has also recently partnered with Accenture Federal Services to launch an end-to-end Cloud Modernization and Migration Factory on Microsoft Azure Government to support federal agencies and ecosystem partners.
