{"id":106890,"date":"2022-02-22T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/security\/blog\/?p=106890"},"modified":"2024-03-28T11:09:19","modified_gmt":"2024-03-28T18:09:19","slug":"the-federal-zero-trust-strategy-and-microsofts-deployment-guidance-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/security\/blog\/2022\/02\/22\/the-federal-zero-trust-strategy-and-microsofts-deployment-guidance-for-all\/","title":{"rendered":"The federal Zero Trust strategy and Microsoft’s deployment guidance for all"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
You\u2019d be forgiven for missing the White House announcement on federal Zero Trust strategy on January 26, 2022.1<\/sup> After all, on that day alone a Supreme Court Justice announced his intention to retire, the Federal Reserve announced its plan to raise interest rates, and the State Department was busy trying to reduce international tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if it didn\u2019t lead the evening news, the security announcement is a crucial milestone for all those that understand the importance of a Zero Trust model<\/a> and are working hard to implement it. It\u2019s no secret that government support for a technology can turbo-boost adoption\u2014ask anyone who uses GPS, the internet, or electronic medical records.2<\/sup> US Federal Government support for Zero Trust is similar: the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has started an accelerated adoption curve for tens of millions of new endpoints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are 2.25 million full-time equivalent employees in the US federal executive branch, and 4.3m if you count postal workers and other staff in the judicial, legislative, and uniformed military branches.3<\/sup> These also include many frontline workers, a critical security topic that I discuss in the blog post Reduce the load on frontline workers with the right management technology<\/a>. The US Federal Government also sets the tone for technology policy in state and local government, which adds another 19.7 million workers, before we even begin to count federal government suppliers who will be asked to comply.4<\/sup> Even at a ratio of one employee per endpoint (and the ratio could be higher with personal devices and IoT), not counting the endpoint strategy updates by overseas governments, we\u2019re looking at tens of millions of endpoints that will be managed according to Zero Trust governance principles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In full, I encourage you to read the memorandum press release, Office of Management and Budget Releases Federal Strategy to Move the U.S. Government Towards a Zero Trust Architecture<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are my three takeaways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n