Building on the Zero Trust Foundation

Federal agencies have spent the last several years putting their Zero Trust (ZT) architecture in place as the foundation for a “never trust, always verify” cybersecurity strategy. The Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been a key facilitator for agencies pursuing ZT, since continuously identifying and fixing cybersecurity threats is one of CISA’s central missions.

CISA’s new CDM Data Model Document (DMD) sets out the minimum set of data requirements needed to leverage the CDM solution to reduce every agency’s threat surface, increase visibility into the federal cybersecurity posture, improve cybersecurity response capabilities, and streamline FISMA reporting.

Learning Objectives:

• Review the data requirements to achieve the minimum required dataset to accomplish the critical objectives of CDM
• Delineate how to overlay the DMD’s data requirements on an agency’s CDM solution to ensure that common program objectives are met and provide clarity to integration needs
• Outline the steps to incorporate these data requirements into the security tools and sensors in use