Sam Andoni, founder and president of Zeva, served as the closing speaker during GovConWire’s “How to Increase Cybersecurity and Return on Investment of Existing PIV Infrastructure for Cross-Agency Encryption” Webinar on Tuesday, June 30th.
Mike Horkey, founder and CEO of Tru-Concepts LLC, introduced Andoni. Horkey noted Andoni’s credentials and qualifications concerning PIV and cybersecurity background. Andoni began his address by discussing why PIV is important and well as the reasons it is limited in real-world application.
“When we look at the government, protecting sensitive data is a top priority and we know well that encryption is the best way to protect data. If that is the case, why is PIV encryption limited?”
Implementing PIV is complex and the end-to-end encryption is difficult for managing data systems as well. Andoni noted that, to send an email, the first step that needs to be implemented is a certificate.
He noted that if emails are used for internal communication, the process is simple. For external communications, complications arise because there is no cross-organization solution. In order to solve this problem, Andoni said that there needs to be a global encryption directory.
“We need a multiple encryption directory, similar to white pages. We need the email and the certification. Zeva has built a directory that is hosted in Azure GovCloud that has the capabilities, including certifications and a set of API to create the secure connection. While email certifications are important, it is not enough.”
Not all certifications are issued with the same assurance. The discrimination can result in encryption with the wrong idenity. Andoni stated that the global directory has to be linked between the global directory and the end user to create centralized trust settings and verification services. This model will act as a proxy and ensure certification and identity.
“To summarize, if we want to simplify PIV certification and ensure the right level of protection, we need three components: a global encryption identity, a centralized trust setting and a client to consume the directory to send encrypted emails,” Andoni added.
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