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I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

bastionzero.com

11–20 of 369 posts

Re: I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

#11

> “Enterprise applications should be able to be used over the public internet.” Isn’t exposing your internal domains and systems outside VPN-gated access a risk? My understanding is this means internaltool.faang.com should now be publicly accessible.

The point isn't to actually expose your internal services. It's to not assume that attackers can't breach your network perimeter. Internal traffic should be treated with the same level of trust as external traffic, that is, none at all.

Re: I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

#12
post #7

> “Enterprise applications should be able to be used over the public internet.” Isn’t exposing your internal domains and systems outside VPN-gated access a risk? My understanding is this means internaltool.faang.com should now be publicly accessible.

As I understand it, this sentence says that the application should be safe even if it was exposed to the public internet, not that it needs to be exposed. It is a good practice to securize everything even if visible only internally. The "perimeter defense" given by a VPN can be a plus, but never the only line of defense.

[deleted]

Re: I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

#13

> “Enterprise applications should be able to be used over the public internet.” Isn’t exposing your internal domains and systems outside VPN-gated access a risk? My understanding is this means internaltool.faang.com should now be publicly accessible.

It's a different framing to get rid of figleafs. Everything has to be built so that it actually has a chance of being secure - if your state of mind is "this is exposed to the public internet", BS excuses like "this is only exposed to the TotallySecure intranet" don't work any more, because they don't work in the first place. Perimeter security only works in exceedingly narrow circumstances which don't apply - and ha…

For anyone confused about the term "figleaf", I assume it's a reference to fig leafs being used by Renaissance artists to mask genitalia. So "things concealing the naked truth" approximately.

Re: I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

#14
post #7

> “Enterprise applications should be able to be used over the public internet.” Isn’t exposing your internal domains and systems outside VPN-gated access a risk? My understanding is this means internaltool.faang.com should now be publicly accessible.

As I understand it, this sentence says that the application should be safe even if it was exposed to the public internet, not that it needs to be exposed. It is a good practice to securize everything even if visible only internally. The "perimeter defense" given by a VPN can be a plus, but never the only line of defense.

The memo does say each agency needs to pick one system that is not internet accessible and make it accessible in the next year. The way I read this memo is pushing that VPNs don't add much in the way of security (if you follow the rest of the memo) and should be removed.

Re: I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

#15
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, this sentence says that the application should be safe even if it was exposed to the public internet, not that it needs to be exposed. It is a good practice to securize everything even if visible only internally. The "perimeter defense" given by a VPN can be a plus, but never the only line of defense.

No, the memo pretty clearly says that VPNs need to go away.

[deleted]

Re: I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

#17

This is pretty incredible. These aren't just good practices, they're the fairly bleeding edge best practices. 1. No more SMS and TOTP. FIDO2 tokens only. 2. No more unencrypted network traffic - including DNS, which is such a recent development and they're mandating it. Incredible. 3. Context aware authorization. So not just "can this user access this?" but attestation about device state! That's extremely cutting edg…

Also, “Password policies must not require use of special characters or regular rotation.”

They even call out the fact that it's a proven bad practice that leads to weaker passwords - and such policies must be gone from government systems in 1 year from publication of the memo. It's delightful.

Re: I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

#18
Really pleasantly surprised at how progressive this memo is. It will be interesting to see the timelines put in place to make the transition.

Btw - I'd love to see the people who put this memo together re-evaluate the ID.me system they're implementing for citizens given how poor the identity verification is.

Re: I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

#19
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, this sentence says that the application should be safe even if it was exposed to the public internet, not that it needs to be exposed. It is a good practice to securize everything even if visible only internally. The "perimeter defense" given by a VPN can be a plus, but never the only line of defense.

No, the memo pretty clearly says that VPNs need to go away.

It says that VPNs and other network tunnels should not be relied on.

Where does it say they should go away?

Re: I read the federal government’s Zero-Trust Memo so you don’t have to

#20
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a different framing to get rid of figleafs. Everything has to be built so that it actually has a chance of being secure - if your state of mind is "this is exposed to the public internet", BS excuses like "this is only exposed to the TotallySecure intranet" don't work any more, because they don't work in the first place. Perimeter security only works in exceedingly narrow circumstances which don't apply - and ha…

For anyone confused about the term "figleaf", I assume it's a reference to fig leafs being used by Renaissance artists to mask genitalia. So "things concealing the naked truth" approximately.

It's older than that: it's a biblical reference to Adam and Eve covering themselves.
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