Effective naval operations depend on secure, seamless access to trusted information across ships, shore commands and global partners. As part of its cybersecurity strategy, the Department of the Navy is adopting a Zero Trust approach to defend its digital infrastructure and maintain mission readiness.
With the DON CIO Zero Trust Blueprint as its guide, the Navy is laying the foundation for a future where every user, device and file is treated with equal scrutiny. The adoption of advanced file-security technologies, such as Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR),fully aligns with and reinforces the guidelines and strategy outlined by the DON CIO Zero Trust Blueprint. But achieving this vision requires more than strong policies and access controls. It also calls for advanced, proactive technologies that protect one of the most common and persistent threat vectors: the file.
In this Q&A, Glasswall’s Senior Solutions Architect, Kelly Davis, explores how Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) can support the Navy’s Zero Trust model.
The Navy’s Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) Blueprint is a roadmap for deploying Zero Trust security across all Department of the Navy (DON) information systems. This initiative, led by the DON Chief Information Officer(CIO), aligns closely with the broader Department of Defense (DoD) Zero Trust strategy, which assumes networks are already compromised and mandates constant verification of users and devices.
The Navy’s blueprint lays out a phased plan (out to FY2030) to integrate Zero Trust principles into everything from enterprise IT services to tactical systems. It is strategically significant because it hardens naval cybersecurity against sophisticated threats, ensuring it protects sensitive data and missions in line with DoD’s goal of achieving full Zero Trust capabilities by FY2027.
Zero Trust is a top priority for the Navy because modern cyber threats routinely evade traditional defenses. The Navy faces real-world dangers like supply chain attacks, where adversaries infiltrate the network by compromising a third-party vendor or software update. It must also contend with insider risks and credential theft, and attackers (or malicious insiders) who manage to breach a perimeter can wander around inside networks undetected, exfiltrating sensitive data over months if not stopped.
Unlike older trust but verify models, Zero Trust starts from the premise that no user or device should be implicitly trusted. This approach is critical to limit the impact of breaches: even if an intruder gets in, Zero Trust controls will flag abnormal behavior and stop them from moving laterally or escalating privileges. From securing enterprise cloud services to protecting tactical afloat networks, adopting Zero Trust is how the Navy stays ahead of threats and ensures that sailors and Marines can trust the information they use.
The Navy’s Zero Trust strategy is built around six core pillars that cover all aspects of a traditional IT environment. These pillars work in concert to enforce the “never trust, always verify” across the board:
· Identity: Verifying that every user is who they claim to be, using strong authentication and strict access controls. This ensures only the right people (and services) get the minimum access needed.
· Device: Ensuring any device accessing the Navy’s networks, from workstations to mobile to IoT, is authenticated and meets security standards (patched, monitored, not compromised). A device’s health is checked continuously before it interacts with resources.
· Network/environment: Segmentation and security at the network level, both physical and cloud. The network pillar uses micro-segmentation to isolate resources and prevent adversaries from moving freely; it also enforces encrypted connections and monitors traffic for anomalies.
· Application & workload: Securing applications (and compute workloads) by enforcing strong access policies and software security practices. This means everything from containerized apps to legacy systems are protected against unauthorized use or vulnerabilities.
· Data: Protecting data at rest and in transit with encryption, tagging, and strict handling policies. Controls in this pillar ensure that even if other layers are breached, critical data remains safe and tracked.
· Visibility & analytics: Continuous monitoring of user behavior, device logs, network traffic, and application events. Advanced analytics (AI/ML, UEBA, SIEM) help detect suspicious activities and improve responses in real-time.
These pillars are interdependent, and success comes from integrating them, not treating any one in isolation. In fact, all pillar capabilities must work together to effectively secure the Data pillar, which lies at the heart of the Zero Trust model. By addressing Identity through Analytics, the Navy’s ZTABlueprint creates a layered, mutually reinforcing defense where a weakness in one area is compensated by protections in another.
Implementing Zero Trust in a large organization like the Navy is not without challenges. One major hurdle is its legacy systems. Adapting or modernizing these systems (some of which support critical missions) requires careful planning to avoid disrupting operations. The Navy also operates in extremely diverse environments, from cloud services to on-premises data centers to ships at sea, which means Zero Trust solutions must work consistently across hybrid infrastructure and varied connectivity conditions.
Another challenge is managing supply chain and partner exposure. The Navy relies on a broad ecosystem of contractors and suppliers, and a vulnerability in any of their systems could be a threat to national defense. Sof data and software coming from outside entities must be verified, which is a complex but essential task (for example, ensuring updates or data from industry partners are authentic and safe). Similarly, enabling secure remote and mobile access for Navy personnel (especially in today’s telework and forward-deployed contexts) means balancing user productivity with rigorous authentication and device health checks.
Finally, there’s the issue of securing file traffic across different security domains. The Navy must routinely move data between classified and unclassified systems, or between isolated mission networks, which is a process that historically can be slow and risky. It needs robust cross-domain solutions to transfer data without introducing malware or leaking sensitive information.In fact, the DoD has a Cross Domain Enterprise Service dedicated to safely moving data between differing security domains, highlighting how critical (and challenging) this is.
Overcoming these challenges with legacy tech, cloud complexity, supply chain risks, remote access, and cross-domain file security is key to making the Zero Trust blueprint a reality.
Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) is an advanced file-security technology that takes a Zero Trust approach to files. Rather than trying to detect malware or bad content in a document (which traditional scanners and antivirus do), CDR simply assumes every file could be malicious and cleans it. It works by disassembling an incoming file, stripping out any elements that don’t meet the expected “known good” standards (active code, macros, malformed data, etc.), and then rebuilding a safe version of the file that preserves the original information and appearance. The result is a file that looks the same to the user but has none of the hidden threats.
This matters for Zero Trust because CDR neutralizes file-based malware without needing to recognize the specific threat beforehand. In other words, it doesn’t rely on virus signatures or sandbox detonation to catch bad files, it just prevents any risky file content from ever executing. That aligns perfectly with “never trust, always verify.” If we treat every file as untrusted by default, CDR is the enforcement mechanism that verifies (and, if necessary, sanitizes) that file before it can be opened or sent onward. It’s essentially a zero-trust data filter for files, ensuring that documents, PDFs, images and any content within can be used safely, even if they came from an unknown or untrusted source. By removing exploits (including zero-days and stealthy malware) pre-emptively, CDR fills a critical gap in defense that detection-based tools often miss.
In Zero Trust, the Data pillar is all about protecting information itself and CDR is a natural fit. We can think of CDR as sanitizing every file at the point of entry and before any use, which greatly strengthens data security. Whenever a file is uploaded, downloaded, emailed, or moved into a Navy system, CDR can process that file and remove potential threats, ensuring the data we ingest is clean. This means the files stored in our databases, passed between our applications, or shared with our partners are free of malware and in a known-good state. It’s a proactive way of maintaining data integrity.
Consider how this supports Zero Trust principles: even if a file comes from a trusted colleague or a long-time system, CDR doesn’t assume it’s safe. Instead, it verifies and rebuilds it and, by doing so, CDR essentially creates a safe version of the data that can be tagged, monitored, and controlled within a Zero Trust environment without fear of hidden malicious code. It also helps prevent data exfiltration via files, since malicious implants or beaconing codewon’t survive the sanitization process. In practice, this capability means ahuge reduction in risk: a user can click on a document or image that’s beenthrough CDR and not worry that it’s harboring a trojan or ransomware.
The Navy’s Zero Trust Blueprint emphasizes protecting data at allstages, and by cleaning files before they ever touch sensitive stores orendpoints, CDR can act as a front-line guard for the data pillar. Every file isverified and reconstructed to a safe standard, which upholds the Zero Trustmotto for data: don’t trust the file’s content until it’s proven safe.
Zero Trust micro-segmentation is about breaking networks into secure zones and limiting how far an intruder can move if they get in. CDR supports this by dramatically reducing the risk that a malicious file can serve as apivot or traversal tool for an attacker. Even if an adversary somehow breaches one segment (say via a compromised account or device), having CDR in place means any file they try to introduce or leverage (for example, a weaponized document intended to infect another system) will be neutralized. Clean files are essentially dead ends for malware where they can’t spawn new attacks or help escalate privileges. This helps reinforce the barriers between segments.
From a least privilege perspective, consider that a network already restricts user access to only the data and applications necessary. CDR addsanother layer by ensuring that even within those allowed interactions, the content itself is safe. For example, a user in one segment might be permitted to download a report from another segment, but without CDR, that file could carry a hidden payload that the user’s access rights wouldn’t ordinarily catch. With CDR, the file is sanitized, so the data can be shared without over-privileging the user to any malicious code.
In essence, CDR keeps each micro-segment clean, so that one compromised area doesn’t infect another. It complements firewalls and identity checks by removing the subtle threats that can slip through in files. This way, even as an organization enforces granular network controls to limit lateral movement, it is also stripping adversaries of one of their favorite tools for breaching those walls, which is usually malicious content disguised as ordinary documents. The result is a more robust containment strategy: each segment remains compartmentalized not just by policy, but by the very content flowing through it.
CDR solutions, such as those provided by Glasswall, don’t operate in a black box, they generate detailed audit logs and reports for every file they handle. This enhances visibility into potential threats and every time a file is disarmed, or a suspicious element is found and removed, those events are recorded. For example, the system might log the file’s original name and type, its sanitized status (cleaned vs. quarantined), timestamps, and even cryptographic hashes of the file before and after sanitization. These breadcrumbs become incredibly valuable for cyber defenders.
With CDR in place, users gain a new stream of file-centric telemetry.This includes what kinds of malicious content are most frequently being stripped out, and which users or inbound channels are associated with the most quarantined files. This data can feed into a broader threat analytics and SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) systems. Security teams can correlate CDR events with other alerts (for instance, if a particular workstation keeps downloading files that CDR flags, it might indicate a user targeted by phishing or a device that’s infected and trying to spread malware).
Moreover, because CDR focuses on content risk, it might catch and log threats that signature-based tools miss, giving organizations visibility into otherwise invisible attacks. All of this contributes to more context and better decision-making in Zero Trust operations.
One of the great advantages of CDR is that it’s a self-contained protection mechanism, which makes it ideal for the Navy’s wide-ranging environments including those at sea or in the field where connectivity can be limited. In contrast, traditional security tools like antiviruses often need regular updates or cloud look-ups to detect the latest threats.
CDR, on the other hand, doesn’t rely on virus definition updates or cloud-based analysis because it uses a policy of known-good file construction that works offline. This means even on an isolated network (such as, aboard aship or a submarine with minimal bandwidth), CDR can continue to sanitize files without connectivity. It doesn’t need to pull down the latest threat intel because it isn’t searching for specific threat signatures; it’s rebuilding files to a safe standard by default.
Additionally, CDR operates essentially in real-time for most file types, so it doesn’t introduce significant delays, which is a crucial factor when bandwidth or connectivity windows are precious. Its portability is another plus: CDR can be delivered as a standalone appliance, an embedded library in existing systems, or a cloud service when available. This flexibility means we can deploy it at strategic points: on a tactical edge device, at a data diode or cross-domain guard, or integrated into a cloud workload, depending on where we need it. Importantly, because CDR doesn’t require an internet connection or constant updates to be effective, it’s resilient in contested environments. Whether users are dealing with an air-gapped classified network, a forward operating base with intermittent comms, or a hybrid cloud that must operate even if disconnected, CDR continues to do its job. In essence, it brings predictable, reliable security to places where other defenses might struggle to keep up, which is a big reason many consider it mission-friendly for maritime and tactical scenarios.
Getting started with CDR in a Navy program is straightforward for organizations adopting a phased, practical approach.
· Start with a pilot: Glasswall can help identify a controlled use-case where file securityis a known pain point, for example, a file-sharing portal between an unclassified and classified network, or an email gateway that sees a lot of attachments. Users can also deploy CDR in parallel with existing security tools and measure the impact. This pilot will help demonstrate how CDR catches and sanitizes malicious content that might be slipping through. It also provides alow-risk environment to refine policies (like which file types to sanitize or block) and to integrate CDR with workflows.
· Integrate with Cross-Domain Solutions: The Navy heavily uses Cross-Domain Solutions (CDS) to move data between different security levels. CDR as a filter within a CDS can augment these by ensuring any file passing through a CDS is cleaned of hidden threats before it reaches the other side. By doing this, it enhances trust in cross-domain file exchanges without relying solely on manual review or complex rule sets. Additionally, compared to the traditional CDS guards being utilized today, each guard has a mandated requirement to include, typically two content filters as files and content passes through the various classification levels to achieve an enhanced depth of protection. Glasswall CDR is one of the two mandated content filters.
· Leverage available resources and partnerships: Glasswall can collaborate with vendors who are operating in this space for joint solution demonstrations and trials tailored to Navy needs. This includes providing demo software and appliances for evaluation in government environments. Navy programs can request briefings or case studies, for instance, this is how other defense or intelligence agencies have implemented CDR for similar challenges.
Content Disarm and Reconstruction is more than just another cybersecurity product; it’s a strategic capability that addresses a critical blind spot in Zero Trust defenses. Zero Trust teaches organizations to verify everything and assumebreach, and CDR extends that philosophy to files and data. By rebuilding filesto eliminate those dangers, CDR fills a gap that other Zero Trust controls(focused on identity, devices, etc.) might not catch. This strengthens everything from preventing lateral movement to protecting data stores. It’salso an enabler for mission agility: users can exchange information more freely (across classifications or with coalition partners). Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) is more than just another cybersecurity product; it’s a strategic capability that addresses acritical blind spot in Zero Trust defenses. While CDR strongly supports Zero Trust principles, it complements rather than replaces other essential ZeroTrust mechanisms such as authentication, segmentation, and continuous monitoring. By rebuilding files to proactively eliminate threats, CDR fills agap that other Zero Trust controls (focused on identity, devices, networks, etc.) might miss, significantly enhancing defenses—from preventing lateral movement to safeguarding data stores. It’s also an enabler for mission agility, allowing users to exchange information more confidently across different classifications or with coalition partners.
Finally, adopting CDR reinforces a culture of cybersecurity vigilance. It sends the message that the organization takes nothing for granted and is committed to using advanced tools to safeguard its networks and data.
Kelly Davis, our Senior Solutions Architect, brings deep expertise in DevOps, IT architecture, and Zero Trust security. Previously a Lead IT Specialist at the Command Control and Communication Tactical Directorate Communications Networks Division in the DoD, delivering secure, scalable solutions in high-stakes environments. At Glasswall, he applies this experience to drive innovation and resilience in our cybersecurity solutions.
Eliminate malware before it reaches your network and ensure your files are always safe and secure with Glasswall’s Zero Trust and intelligent file protection.
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