Enabling Zero Trust

Dell Technologies took a major next step in its effort to provide technologies for enabling zero trust security Wednesday, with the announcement of a new private cloud offering that the company touted as addressing some of the major difficulties around implementing zero trust. Dell disclosed in a blog post Wednesday that it’s working with “more than 30 leading technology and security companies to create a unified solution across infrastructure platforms, applications, clouds and services.”

[Related: Zero Trust Is A Huge Security Opportunity. It Also Means ‘Heartburn’ For Some MSPs.]

Zero trust is increasingly seen as the ideal architecture for stopping hackers in today’s threat environment. Following the principles of zero trust means implementing more ways to verify users really are who they claim to be, and adding measures to ensure malicious actors won’t get far even if they thwart initial defenses. Whereas cybersecurity has previously been approached with a “piecemeal” implementation process, “I don’t know if we’ve really looked at it in its holistic nature, like we do now when it comes to zero trust,” said Max Shier, CISO at Optiv, in a previous interview with CRN.

That theme of taking a holistic look at security via zero trust principles is reflected in Dell’s private cloud announcement, which seeks to enable a range of security capabilities that are necessary for achieving zero trust including continuous authentication, continuous monitoring and microsegmentation, the company said. Dell’s private cloud offering is aimed at “replicating the Department of Defense-approved architecture with technology from leading providers,” the company said.

In an interview with CRN, Dell Global Chief Technology Officer John Roese said that to truly achieve all of the DoD requirements of zero trust, a private cloud approach is essential. However, while Dell is confident that “you can build a zero trust private cloud, it doesn’t mean you can make a public cloud zero trust,” Roese said.

“To do zero trust, you have to be able to see every component and be able to attest that it is in fact trustworthy,” he said. “You quite frankly have a very difficult problem to solve when doing this [in the] public cloud.”

What follows is an edited portion of CRN’s interview with Roese.