Zero Trust, One Mission: DoD’s Cyber Revolution Unleashed

Will Schmitt, Chief of the Technical Portfolio Management Division, joins the show from TechNet Cyber in Baltimore. He reveals how DoD is categorizing Zero Trust approaches into three key courses of action (COAs): legacy uplift strategies, commercial service providers (like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle), and standalone government-operated environments such as Dell-hosted clouds. Schmitt explains how each solution undergoes rigorous functional assessments—including 91 targeted activities and real-time Purple Team exercises that simulate real-world attacks.

The episode highlights how DoD is moving away from vendor-specific tools toward an outcome-focused model with a shared language across agencies. Schmitt details how this collaborative evaluation process enhances agility, shortens assessment timelines, and makes systems more resilient against threats. He also shares how lessons learned from earlier implementations, like the Flank Speed program, are shaping current and future assessments.

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