Don’t Be Spooked by Zero Trust Mandates this Halloween

With Halloween October 2023 around the corner, it’s almost time for the fun and spookiness that comes with this beloved holiday! 

Halloween also happens to be at the end of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and Makpar is here to ensure that our agency partners don’t get cyber spooked this year – especially when it comes to meeting the Zero Trust mandates. 

These were the key themes of a recent Halloween-focused Makpar Knowledge Share presentation by Kavan Weerasinghe (aka “Kavan Weeraspook”), Director Program Delivery & Cybersecurity Practice at Makpar. 

Kavan has authored many deep-dive articles on Zero Trust and brought his knowledge to bear on this critical topic by discussing: 

• What Zero Trust is Not: It’s not a technology, destination, and not a burden on the user. Nor does it replace or duplicate defense in-depth. 

• What Zero Trust is: It’s a model and a stricter cybersecurity program that takes the approach of “trust no one, and always verify.” Zero Trust is also a journey that starts with governance and is security context based on human behavior and its inherent fallibility.  

• Zero Trust is the Gatekeeper: Taking the Halloween theme even further, Kavan discussed how there are vampires (attackers and vulnerabilities) in networks, and Zero Trust is the gatekeeper for reducing further damage to high value assets. This is achieved through asset-specific controls, micro-segmentation and a asset centric granular level of authentication.  

Makpar offers comprehensive cybersecurity practices to help agencies meet specific Zero Trust goals by the end of fiscal year 2024. The team understands status-quo challenges and develops human-centered solutions that allow agencies to fully embrace the concept of “trust no one, and always verify.” 

Here are all of Makpar’s Zero Trust key informational resources: 

• A Zero Trust Cybersecurity Primer for Federal Agencies 

• How Federal Agencies Can Meet New Zero Trust Mandates 

• White Paper | In Response to The SolarWinds Breach: The Need to Return to Cybersecurity Fundamentals 

• Makpar Cybersecurity Forum Video Podcast: Insights Into Zero Trust and Government 

• PODCAST: History of Zero Trust and Government (Part 1) 

• PODCAST: History of Zero Trust and Government (Part 2) 

Don’t get spooked this Halloween by today’s agency cyber challenges! Makpar’s highly skilled and certified cybersecurity experts understand the technology and methodologies required to preserve the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of information in complicated computing environments. Please click here to learn more.