New Pentagon guidance on zero-trust adoption for OT unveiled

DefenseScoop reports that the U.S. Department of Defense has introduced new guidelines for implementing zero-trust security in operational technology systems.

All 105 zero-trust activities and capability outcomes have been divided into the pillars of users, devices, data, applications and workloads, networks and environments, automation and orchestration, and visibility and analytics, according to the Defense Department, which has also split the OT environment into the operational and process control layers. The Pentagon has also emphasized the need for different techniques in tackling zero-trust in IT and OT environments.

"While the core principles of [zero trust] data protection, strong authentication, network segmentation, and threat monitoring apply to OT, their implementation and deployment timescales require careful consideration of OT-specific constraints and priorities. These challenges make [zero trust] adoption more difficult in OT environments and require modifications to the activities and outcomes," said the guidance, which has not set a deadline for adopting zero-trust for OT environments.