{"id":192817,"date":"2026-03-04T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/04\/idaho-national-lab-cyber-breach-accelerates-shift-to-zero-trust-meritalk\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T16:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:30:15","slug":"idaho-national-lab-cyber-breach-accelerates-shift-to-zero-trust-meritalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/04\/idaho-national-lab-cyber-breach-accelerates-shift-to-zero-trust-meritalk\/","title":{"rendered":"Idaho National Lab Cyber Breach Accelerates Shift to Zero Trust \u2013 MeriTalk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Idaho National Lab Cyber Breach Accelerates Shift to Zero Trust \u2013 MeriTalk<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.meritalk.com\/articles\/idaho-national-lab-cyber-breach-accelerates-shift-to-zero-trust\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-04 16:11:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.meritalk.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. A cyber intrusion discovered in 2020 pushed Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to accelerate its shift to a zero trust cybersecurity architecture and adopt cloud-delivered security services from Zscaler, the lab\u2019s top security official said Tuesday.
\nSpeaking at the Zscaler Public Sector Summit, Robert Roser, chief information security officer (CISO) and director of cybersecurity at INL, said the breach exposed gaps in basic cyber hygiene.
\n\u201c[I received] a wake-up call at about two in the morning that our DMZ, our internet-facing applications, was compromised,\u201d Roser said. The intrusion was ultimately traced to APT41, an advanced persistent threat group linked to China.
\nThe lab identified the activity within 24 hours and disconnected its DMZ from the internet while investigating. \u201cWe turned our DMZ completely off in about 36 hours \u2026 while we dealt with it,\u201d Roser explained.
\nThe incident exposed cybersecurity gaps, including cybersecurity tools that system administrators had disabled. Roser said the breach also provided a roadmap for modernizing INL\u2019s security architecture.
\n\u201cThe upside was it gave me, as a new CISO, a roadmap of what I had to work on,\u201d Roser said, adding, \u201cRight after that, it was very obvious \u2026 we were going to shift to a zero trust environment.\u201d
\nA key priority was eliminating traditional VPN-based access and adopting cloud-delivered security services. The lab turned to Zscaler for those services. Roser said the lab deployed Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) and Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) in 2020, allowing INL to secure both internet and application access while improving user experience.
\n\u201cI wanted to get out of the VPN game and switch to Zscaler for a couple reasons. I didn\u2019t like what we were using at the time. It was very clunky and not very secure and didn\u2019t offer a very good user experience,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cWith ZIA and ZPA, I got basically two for one, if you will. We deployed both of them at the same time, and have been sort of leveraging, or incrementally including, our zero trust posture with Zscaler ever since,\u201d Roser said.
\nToday, Roser said INL has fully implemented Zscaler\u2019s architecture and is focused on maturing its capabilities, including expanding artificial intelligence (AI)-driven detection and strengthening identity and data protections.
\nIdentity remains the foundation of the lab\u2019s approach, he said, with efforts underway to tighten role-based access and improve data tagging.
\nFor example, \u201cIf there\u2019s no reason for them to touch financial data, they shouldn\u2019t be able to see it at all,\u201d Roser said.
\nDeepen Desai, chief security officer at Zscaler, said organizations must combine AI and zero trust to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
\n\u201cEvery organization needs to prioritize a solution that will allow them to use AI to fight AI,\u201d Desai said. \u201cYou\u2019re already seeing threat actors use AI to attack your organization, so you need AI to fight AI to level the playing field.\u201d
\nAt the same time, he added, agencies should pursue \u201ca zero trust everywhere strategy\u201d to reduce the number of attack paths adversaries can exploit.<\/p>\n

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