A Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) official explained today how the agency is approaching work on its Thunderdome zero trust prototype project, along with associated identity, credential, and access management (ICAM) efforts, and said DISA expects to have further updates on those over the next several months.
Thunderdome is DISA’s new acquisition activity and prototype effort central to its zero trust security and network architecture. Booz Allen Hamilton was recently awarded a contract for this initiative.
“I want to make it clear that what we’re doing with Thunderdome is a stepping stone for zero trust but it also relies … on other parts and other initiatives within the department cybersecurity architecture,” said Brandon Iske, DISA’s chief engineer for security enablers, at an event organized by FCW.
Iske said DISA was likely to share more information on the Thunderdome project over the next three to six months. Over that period, the agency will be operationally testing how to implement DISA’s Zero Trust Reference Architecture through utilizing commercial technologies such as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Software Defined-Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN).
“We’ll have a few additional engagements from some of our executive leadership as well as the DISA conference that we typically host on either an annual or biannual basis – I think later this April as well,” said Iske. “So, there’ll be opportunities there to get additional updates, at least in public forums.”
