Although many organizations believe that zero trust security does not have a destination, Dell Technologies is changing that narrative through its fully configured Project Fort Zero security solution.
Compton Moore, a zero trust principal engineering technologist within Project Fort Zero at Dell Technologies, explained today that Project Fort Zero is a Dell-led industry initiative with over 45 partners designed to accelerate the path to zero trust.
Notably, Moore announced that this end-to-end zero trust solution will be validated by the Department of Defense (DoD) this year.
“As you hear different speakers today, no one else is going to be able to tell you that today – that they’re going to be validated by DoD,” Moore said during the first day of the WEST 2024 conference in San Diego, Calif., co-sponsored by AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute.
“Zero trust is a journey and some people like to say that this journey doesn’t have a destination, but it completely does. And the destination that Dell believes is a federally accredited, validated zero trust architecture,” he added. “We’re doing this by activating all the zero trust principles at once to ensure complete protection and efficiency.”
The DoD turned to Dell Technologies to build the Project Fort Zero solution to “industrialize the zero trust architecture,” according to Moore.
The solution – which the company unveiled at Dell Technologies World in May 2023 – aims to help organizations better protect themselves against cyberattacks. It was developed in alignment with the DoD’s Zero Trust Strategy, which outlines a total of 152 zero trust activities.
One major use case for Project Fort Zero is to support interoperability between what organizations have on-premise and in the cloud. However, Moore said that to fully reap the benefits of the security solution, organizations will need to migrate their workloads into a zero trust context.
“You have to integrate and migrate your work into a zero trust context first to fully achieve the zero trust protection,” he explained. “You get in what you put out. So, you have to identify your users and devices and how that data is managed by the 152 activities first.”
Nevertheless, Moore said that Project Fort Zero can provide “a hierarchical view” in on-prem data centers, in remote or regional locations, and in the field.
“Dell’s main objective is bringing zero trust ecosystem to its commercial, private, and public customers to accelerate their adoption of zero trust,” he concluded. “We solve the integration burden by teaming up with over 45 partners to activate the 152 activities all at one time – and you won’t have to take our word for it because we are getting validated by the Department of Defense this year.”
