The Pentagon’s progress toward Zero Trust compliance recently made headlines when it was reported that the Department of Defense (DoD) is only 14% of the way toward its goal. While that number might seem concerning, it highlights a critical truth: the hardest part of the journey lies in the Identity and Data Pillars. As the Chief of Staff of the Pentagon’s Zero Trust PfMO put it, “It’s got to be interoperable between the DoD, [civilians in the federal government], the IC [intelligence community] and Five Eyes and other mission partner environments.”
This interoperability challenge isn’t about ticking compliance boxes. It’s about ensuring secure, dynamic collaboration between the U.S. military, federal agencies, intelligence communities, and international allies. The solution? Zero Trust Data Format (ZTDF)—the open source bridge to secure data sharing between Allies.
Historically, secure communication across allied nations has been hindered by disparate standards and manual tagging processes. Interoperability solves this problem with secure, real-time data sharing between mission partners who may not have been partners yesterday.
Military operations need this rapid formation of data-sharing alliances, sometimes in tactical edge environments with degraded connectivity. The question becomes: How do we build data bridges on the fly—without compromising security?
Zero Trust Data Format (ZTDF) changes the game. Ratified by NATO’s Combined Communications Electronics Board (CCEB), ZTDF is designed as the first interoperable data security wrapper that bridges the U.S. Intelligence Community, DoD, and NATO member countries. It reconciles classification standards across borders, automatically translating data tags based on pre-established access rights.
Imagine this: A U.S. mission partner tags a file as "Top Secret" and "Releasable to Five Eyes partners." When a U.K. partner accesses it, ZTDF automatically maps it to the U.K.'s standards—no duplication, no manual retagging. This seamless interoperability saves time, reduces errors, and ensures secure collaboration without bottlenecks.
ZTDF isn’t just a format; it’s the embodiment of data-centric security, where protection follows the data wherever it goes. In an environment where data must move dynamically to support life-saving missions, this approach ensures that sensitive information remains secure regardless of location.
Extending the power of ZTDF and Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC), Virtru’s Data Security platform also supports Multi-Key Access Servers (Multi-KAS), allowing each nation to manage encryption keys independently while enabling secure key synchronization across networks. This means data remains protected in disconnected environments and syncs securely once connectivity is restored—a critical capability for tactical operations.
Recommended Reading: How Virtru Supports the Department of Defense Zero Trust Strategy
While the DoD identifies the Identity and Data Pillars as the most challenging aspects of Zero Trust, ZTDF uniquely addresses both. By embedding access rights and classification tags directly into data objects, ZTDF ensures that only authorized users with the correct credentials can access sensitive information.
This convergence of data and identity enables attribute-based access control (ABAC), allowing dynamic and granular permissions based on user attributes such as role, clearance level, and geographic location. The result? Real-time, secure collaboration that empowers mission partners without sacrificing security.
Zero Trust is more than a defense strategy—it’s an operational imperative that requires both defensive security and offensive data sharing. As the DoD and its mission partners strive for full Zero Trust compliance, ZTDF offers the framework to overcome the most complex challenges of interoperability and dynamic data sharing.
In a world where data drives mission success, ZTDF ensures that the right data gets to the right people, at the right time, securely and seamlessly. The Pentagon’s Zero Trust journey may only be 14% complete, but with ZTDF, the path to 100% should be a lot clearer.