Former Federal Chief Information Officer and Air Force Cyber Operations Officer to Help Government Agencies Innovate with Zero Trust Segmentation to Stop the Spread of Breaches

Illumio, Inc., the Zero Trust Segmentation company, announced the appointment of Gary Barlet as Federal Field Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Barlet has nearly three decades of cloud, cybersecurity and network experience in the U.S. federal government leading security and IT teams in both civilian agencies and the Department of Defense (DoD). In this newly created role, Barlet will work with government agencies, contractors and the broader ecosystem to build in Zero Trust Segmentation as a strategic component of the government’s Zero Trust architecture. Zero Trust Segmentation, also known as microsegmentation, is noted in the President’s Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity as a critical strategy in bolstering our cyber resilience as a nation.

According to the EO, “the Federal Government must adopt security best practices; advance toward Zero Trust Architecture; accelerate movement to secure cloud services … and invest in both technology and personnel to match these modernization goals.” To accomplish this, the order specifically calls on the Secretaries of Commerce and Homeland Security and the Directors of NIST, CISA, and the OMB to publish “guidance outlining security measures for critical software” including “network segmentation.”

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“Legacy approaches to security that focus solely on keeping attackers out or rely only on detection once they’ve breached the perimeter are no longer enough to keep government agencies and the citizens they serve secure. Zero Trust Segmentation is a critical pillar to a Zero Trust architecture in order to isolate workloads and devices across the hybrid attack surface to dramatically limit the impact of a breach,” said PJ Kirner, co-founder and CTO of Illumio. “I’m grateful to have Gary’s extensive civilian and DoD experience to support our federal customers. He brings a deep understanding of the federal government’s Zero Trust goals and, importantly, a commitment to security innovation that will help both Illumio and our customers continue to grow.”

Prior to joining Illumio, Barlet served as the Chief Information Officer at the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Postal Service, where he was responsible for developing and leading strategic technology initiatives to deliver an innovative IT and security infrastructure that supported more than 1,200 users across 105 locations, keeping the network responsive and resilient. He also successfully migrated the agency to the cloud and led the three-week development of a website to track over $2 trillion in pandemic relief funds at the request of the Pandemic Recovery Accountability Committee to meet a federal mandate. He was the agency’s first nominee for the prestigious Presidential Rank Award and winner of the Barry R. Snyder Joint Award from the Council of Inspectors General. Prior to that role, he served in the Air Force in several technology leadership capacities, retiring from his role as Cyber Operations Officer.

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“Building national cybersecurity resilience has never been more urgent. Government leaders are working tirelessly to secure the most complex environment in history from increasingly frequent and catastrophic attacks by building their cybersecurity strategies around a Zero Trust architecture,” said Barlet. “Zero Trust Segmentation is an essential pillar of Zero Trust that stops breaches from spreading to limit their impact – and Illumio is the clear leader in this category. I’m thrilled to join Illumio’s world class team to help bring Zero Trust Segmentation to more government agencies and organizations to better protect critical assets and missions.”

This announcement comes at a time of rapid growth and momentum for Illumio and the Zero Trust Segmentation market. The company recently released The Zero Trust Impact Report, the industry’s first research on market perspectives of Zero Trust strategies and the business impact of Zero Trust Segmentation. Last month, Illumio appointed Mario Espinoza, formerly the head of product management for Palo Alto Networks’ cloud security business unit, as Chief Product Officer. Illumio was also recently named a Gartner Cool Vendor in Communications Service Provider (CSP) Business and Network Operations, and Forrester named Illumio a Leader in The Forrester New Wave™: Microsegmentation, Q1 2022. The Illumio platform provides a modern, scalable approach to Zero Trust Segmentation to stop breaches from spreading across hybrid IT, from the cloud to the data center.