CloudMask is among companies to attend Security and Policing 2015, the UK security and law enforcement exhibition. The firm says that threats from ISIS and other organisations attempting to infiltrate government communications, demonstrates the need for secure collaboration within the government and between international security and intelligence agencies.
CloudMask says that it’s delivering secure multi-jurisdiction collaboration for a department of the Canadian Federal Government. The department has over 20,000 employees across 80 countries and has diversified and siloed IT operations, with each country managing its own servers. The department regularly shares confidential information on a need to know basis across multiple jurisdictions, including internal and external stakeholders from other government organisations and agencies.
Emergency task forces are regularly created by the department as a result of world events. Members include national and international governments, external experts from universities, research labs and individual domain experts, all connected to a variety of networks and access systems with varying trust levels. Task forces need to be created and provisioned quickly, with strict restrictions applied to each member and based on a need to know approach. In addition, member activities and transactions all need to be tracked and logged for audit purposes.
The Canadian Federal Government department created the Globally Secure – Emergency Task Force System (GS-ETFS) using a data and user-centric security solution from CloudMask. The public cloud offered a significant opportunity to provide a low cost, standard collaboration platform which could not be considered due to the security limitations. The cloud product firm says that GS-ETFS now securely uses multiple public cloud offerings including, Microsoft SharePoint, Gmail, Google Drive, Office 365 and Box. The technology ensures explicit trust of the information at a very granular level for each participant in the task force – a zero trust model. For CloudMask videos see www.vimeo.com/cloudmask.
Jirka Danek, former chief technology officer and chief information security officer, Canadian Federal Government, says: “Governments around the world, including the Canadian Federal Government, have experienced security breaches and data loss. The concept of secure network perimeters is simply insufficient to meet the challenges we face today. Many of these breaches are a result of inside actors, some intentional and some by human error. Either way, the risks are significant. The complexity of data privacy and residency regulations, compounded by the security of government data in the cloud means organisations around the world are grappling with the same issues we faced. By taking a step back, looking at a new paradigm and anonymising data from creation, public and private organisations are not only able to take advantage of the cloud but can easily comply with today’s increasingly complex data privacy regulations.”
And Wael Aggan, CEO, CloudMask, sys: “Internal and external threats to confidential government data are changing and growing. Edward Snowden, ISIS and state-sponsored cyberattacks are key examples of why governments need to govern their collaboration across multiple agencies and jurisdictions, while assuring data protection from external and internal threats. For governments to succeed, it’s important that best practices are shared.”
Visit CloudMask at stand 1-04, Security & Policing 2015 at Farnborough FIVE, March 10-12, 2015. Visit www.cloudmask.com.
