A significant shift is underway in the world of federal data management. President Trump's recent executive order is aimed at promoting data sharing and eliminating information silos within federal agencies to reduce spending and increase collaboration. This EO represents a watershed moment for secure data collaboration that builds on the Evidence Act of 2018 which established the role of the Chief Data Officer.
Understanding the Executive Order
The executive order directly targets longstanding barriers to information sharing across government. It mandates that agency heads grant designated federal officials full and prompt access to unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and IT systems. Key provisions include:
- Federal officials gaining immediate access to unclassified data from state programs receiving federal funding
- Agency heads rescinding or modifying existing policies that hinder data sharing within 30 days
- Agencies reviewing classified information policies to identify unnecessary classifications
- Superseding previous executive orders that obstruct inter-agency collaboration
The directive builds upon earlier initiatives, including the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with the stated goal of reducing inefficiency and combating waste, fraud, and abuse by improving access to data.
This executive order acknowledges a fundamental truth – data locked in silos cannot deliver its full value. But effectively implementing this vision requires answering an important question: How do we enable this free flow of information without compromising security, privacy, or control?
Born from Firsthand Experience with Government Data Silos
The story of Virtru and our Trusted Data Format (TDF) technology begins with this exact challenge. Our co-founders, John and Will Ackerly, experienced the frustration of data silos firsthand during their government service.
John, while working at the White House on 9/11 for President Bush, and Will, during his time at the NSA, both witnessed countless situations where critical information couldn't reach the people who needed it – not because of legitimate security concerns, but because of technological and policy barriers.
In one particularly telling example, a Special Forces operator was unable to share critical search-and-rescue coordinates after a disaster because the information was trapped in a segregated classified network. The operator later described: "We had the technology to find people and coordinate our efforts, but the tech couldn't talk to each other. We could have lost survivors because our networks couldn't share what our eyes could see."
These experiences motivated Will to invent the Trusted Data Format (TDF) – an open standard that defines and enforces granular policy and access control at the object-level to ensure that sensitive data remains protected and under the owner's control, even after it’s been shared. John and Will co-founded Virtru to bring this technology to market and give organizations a simple way to share data without losing control or sacrificing privacy. Today, the emergence of TDF as an open standard, and the numerous innovations brought forth by Virtru, are fundamentally changing how the world thinks about data security.
A New Paradigm: Data-Centric Security
Traditional approaches to information security focus on securing identities, endpoints, networks, and applications – and effectively building walls around data to prevent data from leaving the organization due to theft or mistakes. But in today's interconnected world, this perimeter-centric approach creates unnecessary barriers to collaboration and leaves data vulnerable to breaches when they inevitably occur.
TDF and Virtru's Data-Centric Security Platform take a different approach. Rather than securing the systems that house data, we give our customers agency over their sensitive data so they can share it freely via email, file, and application workflows in a manner that is supported by:
- Persistent protection: Security that stays with the data no matter where it travels
- Granular access controls: Determine who can access information based on attributes and identity entitlements
- Granular policy controls: Rules that govern how information can be used, shared, and for how long
- Visibility and audit: Understand who accessed data and when, across its entire lifecycle
Enabling Secure Sharing While Maintaining Control
The executive order's goals of eliminating inefficiency, enhancing oversight, and combating waste and fraud require that agencies find ways to share information more freely.
By adding security into the data itself, agencies can:
- Share sensitive information across traditional boundaries
- Consolidate multiple networks into fewer core environments (as demonstrated by CENTCOM, which merged 19 disparate networks into just 3)
- Achieve significant cost savings by eliminating duplicative systems
- Enable AI workflows that depend on pooling data from diverse sources
- Maintain control over who can access what information, even after it's shared
Breaking Down Silos For A More Productive and Secure Future
At Virtru, we believe that data sharing and data security are not opposing forces – they are complementary goals that reinforce each other when implemented correctly.
The executive order's directive to grant designated officials prompt access to agency records creates an opportunity to embrace not just more data sharing, but smarter data sharing through data-centric security. By adopting approaches like TDF, agencies can confidently share information while maintaining appropriate controls and addressing well founded concerns about security and privacy.
The future of government efficiency doesn't require choosing between security and collaboration. With the right technology foundation, we can have both – protecting sensitive information while breaking down the silos that have hampered government effectiveness for too long.
In this new era of data sharing, security isn't the barrier – it's the enabler. And that's something everyone can support, regardless of political affiliation.
