Dell Technologies recognizes that a zero-trust architecture cannot be delivered by a single vendor or product. That's why the company is integrating zero-trust capabilities from more than 30 leading security, networking, chip and other technology companies to build an ecosystem following the guidance from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)’s zero-trust strategy.

“The advanced private cloud zero trust solution we're building contains hardware and software from each of the partners in the ecosystem,” Dell Technologies Federal CTO Herb Kelsey told SDxCentral in an email.

These partners include Juniper Networks, Maryland Innovation Security Institute (MISI), Nvidia, Palo Alto Networks and VMware, all of whom have recently made strides in advancing zero-trust security.

Juniper’s Connected Security portfolio delivers a zero-trust data center architecture with advanced threat management beyond traditional firewalls, the vendor claims. It also introduced Security Director Cloud as its portal to secure access service edge (SASE), which CEO Rami Rahim touted as essential to help customers migrate to zero trust.

Nvidia last year announced a data center solution that combines Dell PowerEdge servers with Nvidia’s data processing units (DPUs) and graphic processing units (GPUs) to support artificial intelligence (AI), data and zero-trust security capabilities.

Palo Alto Networks introduced its Zero Trust OT Security solution in February. Chairman and CEO Nikesh Arora earlier argued that zero-trust security becomes a business imperative in the era of hybrid cloud and flex work, and an effective secure access service edge (SASE) deployment should start with next-gen zero-trust network access (ZTNA). The vendor is also calling on the industry to shift toward next-generation ZTNA.

VMware is also dedicated to the zero-trust model. It uses a scaled-out, distributed security architecture to protect users and data across the network from endpoints to the data center and across multiple clouds. And it offers ZTNA via VMware Secure Access.

MISI teamed up with Dell to offer the technology at the Zero Trust Center of Excellence, which is located at DreamPort, the U.S. Cyber Command’s cybersecurity innovation facility, and is designed to provide a secure data center for organizations to test configurations and validate zero-trust use cases.

Dell also introduced cybersecurity advisory services for zero-trust adoption last year. The vendor aims to be the ecosystem builder and integrator, Global CTO John Roese said in an earlier interview. “We’re Switzerland.”

The ecosystem offers a technology map that includes 45 capabilities required to achieve an advanced level of zero-trust maturity, Kelsey claims.

“By replicating the Department of Defense-approved architecture with technology from leading providers, we’re enabling organizations to defeat cyber criminals while meeting the U.S. government’s zero-trust mandate,” he wrote in a blog post.

The DoD refers to zero trust as a framework using security capabilities, including multi-factor authentication (MFA), microsegmentation, advanced encryption, endpoint security, analytics, and robust auditing to fortify data, applications, assets and services to deliver cyber resiliency.

Kelsey noted the challenge of zero-trust deployment lies in implementing a complete solution guided by the seven pillars of zero trust defined by DoD — user, devices, applications and workloads, data, network and environment, automation and orchestration, visibility and analytics.

To execute these requirements, Dell unified capabilities from over 30 technology vendors, such as continuous authentication; comply to connect, device detection and compliance; continuous monitoring and ongoing authorization; data encryption and rights management; software-defined networking; policy decision point and policy orchestration; and threat intelligence, according to Kelsey.