Project Fort Zero – Data Security for Today’s Artificial Intelligence

Learn more about the intersection of Zero Trust and Artificial Intelligence ahead of Dell’s Project Fort Zero assessment this summer.

Over the last six years, the global cost of cybercrime increased by 1,237%.¹ As the rate and impact of cybercrime steadily increases, so does the complexity of the tactics used by cyber criminals. The frequency of cybercrimes is now so common, people and organizations have become desensitized to the impact. Adversaries have long held the advantage in cyberspace. Designing an attack takes minutes, while defending takes much longer. This forces organizations to play an asymmetric battle for control of their data. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is closing the gap between cyber criminals and organizations, which has existed for years in a traditional perimeter-based security approach. The playing field is becoming more balanced as organizations continue to implement AI across their security environments.

AI empowers organizations to capitalize on all available data to drive near real-time decision-making to monitor, detect, analyze and react to cyber threats. By leveraging large language models, coupled with machine learning, AI can detect anomalies in behavior—improving threat detection and response time. Additionally, AI improves an organization’s understanding of the threat landscape and reduces cyber criminals’ attack surface.

The growing demand for AI across all facets of an organization is a powerful story, but that story is only as valuable as the data used to write it. Protecting data is at the core of Zero Trust. By adopting Zero Trust principles, organizations can capitalize on all the benefits AI offers while ensuring data quality.

Announced at Dell Technologies World 2023, Project Fort Zero (PFZ) provides an end-to-end greenfield solution with ready-to-use capabilities. Adhering to the guidelines provided in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Zero Trust Reference Architecture (ZTRA), PFZ simplifies and accelerates the adoption of Zero Trust. PFZ is designed in alignment with the U.S. DoD ZTRA to provide advanced-level Zero Trust capability, with a best-in-class vendor ecosystem. The PFZ solution applies all 45 capabilities and 152 activities of the U.S. DoD ZTRA into a sovereign on-premises enterprise private cloud. The U.S. DoD is scheduled to assess PFZ’s adherence to the advanced-level requirements outlined during the summer of 2024.

Click here to learn more about Project Fort Zero and the intersection of Zero Trust and AI. I will be hosting a session at Dell Technologies World on A Zero Trust checklist for your business, and how Project Fort Zero delivers. If you’re attending and would like to meet with the Project Fort Zero team, please reach out here.

1 Emma Charlton, 2023 was a big year for cybercrime – here’s how we make our systems safer, World Economic Forum, January 10, 2024.

Herb Kelsey

About the Author: Herb Kelsey

Herb Kelsey is the Project Fort Zero Lead in Dell Technologies Chief Technology Office, building on an extensive multi-decade career. He began his career as a GE-trained engineer and manager, and subsequently as a successful software entrepreneur, an IBM-trained architect, IBM’s first CTO for Cyber Security and the Chief Architect for a U.S. Department of Defense’s mission support agency’s global portfolio. Herb supported the Intelligence Community around the world post-9/11, designing secure clouds, secure networks and agency-wide mission infrastructures. He was deployed to create the operational watch for our National Counter Terrorism Center and invent analytics for social media intelligence. Herb participated in joint R&D activities, including the system that became IBM Streams. In the commercial arena, Herb designed healthcare data analytics for the affordable care act, implemented cognitive solutions for IBM Watson and applied blockchain to secure software supply chains for globally distributed IoT devices.