Zero Trust Needed to Win the Cyber War (E157)

Zero Trust has revolutionized the way agencies everywhere are securing their networks, and this week on Feds at the Edge, we talk with titans in the field, including John Kindervag, Chief Evangelist with Illumio, who in 2010 coined the phrase “zero trust model.” We delve into this stricter cybersecurity program where identity leads in the guideposts in defending today’s cyber landscape.

Dr. Robert Roser, CISO with the Idaho National Laboratory agrees, “Without identity, nothing else matters.”

We also discuss the larger-than-life landscape that agencies are tasked with protecting. Sean Connelly, Federal Zero Trust Architect with CISA reminds listeners, while most know the big three cloud providers, there are over 300. Limiting our understanding to “the main and the plain” could lead to trouble. La Monte R. Yarborough, Acting DCIO, CISO and Executive Director, Office of Information Security, HHS, shares HHS is tasked with protecting 1200+ networks every day.

Tune in on your favorite podcast platforms today to hear the latest on how compliance with zero trust should be ingrained in every system’s administration.

To view this webinar: Zero Trust is Needed to Win the Cyber War.

Zero Trust Featured Speakers:

La Monte Yarborough

Acting DCIO, CISO & Executive Director

La Monte R. Yarborough was appointed Acting Deputy Chief Information Officer (DCIO) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on December 4, 2023.

La Monte also maintains his role as Chief Information Security Officer and Executive Director, Office of Information Security where he fosters an enterprise-wide secure and trusted environment in support of HHSs commitment to better health and well-being of the American people. La Monte became Acting CISO on January 18, 2022, and then CISO on July 17, 2022.

From January 2020 to January 2022, La Monte served as CISO for HHS’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) where he spearheaded a multidisciplinary cybersecurity team comprised of IT professionals, auditors, evaluators, investigators and attorneys focused on combatting cybersecurity threats within HHS and the healthcare industry. Within this period, La Monte also served as the Acting CIO and eventually the Director for the Operations and Management Division, where his focus was to bring secure & high-performance computing platforms to every user in OIG.

Prior to joining HHS, La Monte worked in various cybersecurity leadership roles including CISO of Headquarters, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He was involved in standing up DHS’ information security organization from the ground up, including managing IT security contracts totaling over $300M.

Prior to his work at DHS, La Monte served as a consultant and spent over 20 years in the U.S. Army specializing in IT and cybersecurity.

A member of the Senior Executive Service of the Federal Government, La Monte holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts with a focus in Management from Excelsior College, a Master of Science in Cybersecurity from Webster University, and a Master of Science in Information Assurance from Strayer University. La Monte also holds a masters certificate in IT Project Management from The George Washington University, is a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), and a graduate of the Federal Executive Institute.

Acting DCIO, CISO & Executive Director,
Office of Information Security, HHS

Dr. Robert Roser

Chief Information Security Officer

Robert “Rob” Roser is a particle physicist and currently serves as Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) Chief Information Security Officer as well as Director for Cybersecurity and Chief Data Officer. He joined INL four years go.

Prior to INL, Rob spent 25 years at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), America’s premier particle physics laboratory located outside of Chicago Illinois where he held the role of distinguished scientist and served in a number of scientific and laboratory leadership roles.

Most recently at Fermilab, Roser served as the project scientist for the lab’s $3.2B flagship project the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) where he was charged with the design and construction of a high intensity neutrino beam and capable of delivering a megawatt powered beam aimed at a detector located in western South Dakota.

Prior to that, Roser served as the lab’s Chief Information Officer (CIO). In this role, he was responsible for scientific (high performance) computing, business systems, and information technology governance as well as cyber security.

Earlier in his career, Roser led for almost a decade Fermilab’s flagship experiment the Collider Detector Experiment (CDF) which operated in the Tevatron accelerator. This experiment, consisted of more than 700 scientists from 60 academic institutions across 15 countries, CDF is best known for the discovery of the Top Quark and first evidence of the long sought-after Higgs Boson. Under Roser’s leadership the experiment published ~450 refereed scientific papers.

Dr. Roser received his bachelor’s degree from the Univ. of Connecticut and his doctorate from the Univ. of Rochester; he was a post-doctoral research associate at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before joining Fermilab as a Wilson Fellow. He is a member of numerous scientific advisory panels, a fellow of the American Physical Society and is the author of over 670-refereed publications.

Chief Information Security Officer,
Idaho National Laboratory

Sean Connelly

Federal Zero Trust Architect

Sean Connelly serves as the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) Program Manager and Senior Cybersecurity Architect, Cybersecurity Division (CSD), Office of the Technical Director (OTD) at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The TIC initiative is the federal government’s strategy to securely protect government networks that connect to the Internet and cloud providers. CISA’s TIC Program Office works with a wide-spectrum of partners across government and industry and leads the way at enhancing network security across the federal enterprise horizon. Additionally Mr. Connelly was a co-author of the Cloud Security Technical Reference Architecture (CSTRA) designed to guide agencies’ secure migration to the cloud by explaining considerations for shared services, cloud migration, and cloud security posture management; the Zero Trust Maturity Model which assists agencies in the development of their zero trust strategies and implementation plans, and presents ways in which various CISA services can support zero trust solutions across agencies; and finally, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-207, Zero Trust Architecture, which discusses the core logical components that make up a zero trust architecture.

Federal Zero Trust
Architect, CISA

Robert Wood

Chief Information Security Officer

Robert Wood is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). He leads enterprise cyber security, compliance, privacy, and counter intelligence functions at CMS and ensures the Agency complies with secure IT requirements while encouraging innovation.

Mr. Wood has over 10 years of experience in information technology, information security and management consulting.

As information technology has grown more complex with the advent of innovative technologies that enable rapid collection, storage and distribution of vast amounts of information and data, so too has the importance of safeguarding the privacy of health and other sensitive information collected by CMS. Our Agency is entrusted with the health information of over 100 million Americans, and it is our fundamental responsibility as stewards of this information to ensure its confidentiality is protected. Robert leads CMS’s efforts to ensure we meet the standards of excellence demanded by that stewardship responsibility, and protect it from bad actors both foreign and domestic.

Prior to CMS, Mr. Wood has built and managed several security programs in the technology sector. He was also formerly a Principal Consultant for Cigital where he advised enterprises about their software security programs. He also founded and led the red team assessment practice with Cigital, focused on holistic adversarial analysis, helping organizations identify and manage risks from alternative perspectives.

Mr. Wood has a B.S. in Information Management & Technology from Syracuse University.

Chief Information Security Officer,
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Svs.

John Kindervag

Chief Evangelist

John Kindervag is considered one of the world’s foremost cybersecurity experts. With over 25 years of experience as a practitioner and industry analyst, he is best known for creating the revolutionary Zero Trust Model of Cybersecurity. As Chief Evangelist at Illumio, John Kindervag is responsible for accelerating awareness and adoption of Zero Trust Segmentation.

Most recently, John led cybersecurity strategy as a Senior Vice President at On2IT. He previously served as Field CTO at Palo Alto Networks and, before that, spent over eight years as a Vice President and Principal Analyst on the security and risk team at Forrester Research.

In 2021, John was named to the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) Zero Trust Sub-Committee and was a primary author of the NSATC Zero Trust report that was delivered to the President. That same year, he was also named CISO Magazine’s Cybersecurity Person of the Year. John serves as an advisor to several organizations, including the Cloud Security Alliance and Venture Capital firm NightDragon.

Chief Evangelist,
Illumio

John Breeden

Moderator & Contributing Editor

FedInsider Contributing Editor John Breeden II is an award winning journalist and reviewer who has spent 20 years working in the federal, technology and government space. Articles and reviews written by him have appeared in numerous national publications including Chief Security Officer, Stars and Stripes, The Washington Post, NextGov Magazine, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Technology, Network World, The Sacramento Bee, The Boston Globe, Government Computer News, Up Front New Mexico and many others.

For FedInsider, he has written many articles and white papers and acted as the moderator for over 20 interviews featuring federal, state and local officials discussing technology, policy and governmental issues.

In addition to his normal writing, Breeden has authored two technical how-to type computer books published by Prompt Publications. Those titles, Exploring Microsoft Office and Guide to Webcams enjoyed both commercial success and reviewer acclaim. He is also the founding publisher and chief editor of Gameindustry.com, one of the longest running publications covering the video game industry. He is the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group of professional journalists who craft thought leadership projects for government and private organizations.

He has twice been awarded Jessie H. Neal gold medals for excellence in business journalism as well as numerous national awards for journalism by the American Society of Business Publication Editors.