Adopting and implementing a zero trust security approach is critical to help avoid the types of major IT disruptions and massive data compromises seen in recent cyberattacks that affected the healthcare, public health and government sectors, said Clinton McCarty, director of enterprise security and CISO at federal contractor National Government Services.
“The movement toward a zero trust architecture and doing recursive validation of individuals that are accessing our systems and our networks moves us a long way toward further early detection and prevention,” he said.
“Leaning toward a zero trust framework – it’s going to take millions and millions and millions of dollars of investment across federal agencies to really move that paradigm shift forward,” he said.
“But the more we talk about zero trust and the way we can validate the access points, the data classification and the various pillars of a zero trust architecture, the more secure our assets will be.”
In this audio interview with Information Security Media Group (see audio link below photo), McCarty also discussed:
- The lessons emerging from the Change Healthcare cyberattack;
- Critical security considerations for legacy IT systems;
- The importance of robust cyberthreat intelligence sharing among the healthcare, public health and government sectors.
McCarty has been at National Government Services for 15 years. He is responsible for securing and protecting the company’s internal and external data and data systems, and he oversees asset and access management, security operations and governance, IT service management, and the NGS enterprise data center. Prior to NGS, he worked as an independent information security consultant supporting the financial, biomedical and biopharmaceutical sectors.