The Department of Defense (DoD) is prioritizing data federation to help ensure that defense components and military services meet the department’s fiscal year (FY) 2027 Zero Trust goal, a senior Pentagon tech official said today.
Data is one of the department’s most important, yet most challenging, assets. The sheer volume of data is staggering, and the department often struggles to fully understand its inventory. With the amount of data continuing to grow, managing and effectively utilizing it becomes an ever-increasing challenge.
“We want to access the right data, for the right people, at the right time. We want to make sure those foundational components are done across the board,” Gurpreet Bhatia, DoD principal director for Cybersecurity and deputy chief information security officer, said today during an INSA Coffee & Conversation event.
Part of the department’s plan for tackling its data challenge, Bhatia explained, involves federating access to data.
Data federation is a key data management strategy designed to enhance both data quality and accessibility. It involves querying data from multiple sources and consolidating it into a unified, virtual format, making it easier to access and analyze.
“As a user, I may need to provide an assertion to another domain to say, ‘hey, I need access to certain amount of data or certain types of data,’ having that federation done right you’re going to ensure that there’s interoperability,” Bhatia said.
“That’s one of the things we’re looking for now is, how do you have federation, which means that you’re going to have some normalization,” he added. “You’re going to normalize your data, for instance, you’re going to normalize and federate identities and you’re going to make sure that there’s interoperability.”
Bhatia explained that a zero trust architecture demands a shift in how the department thinks about its data inventory “to make sure that we can build on those components … as well as understanding the value of your data that you’re trying to protect and share for different mission purpose.”
The DoD has been on a nearly two-year mission to create a unified security posture across diverse domains. In 2022, the department released a zero trust strategy and roadmap outlining how the agency plans to fully implement a department-wide zero trust cybersecurity framework by FY2027.
