Victoria Coleman, chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force, has urged the service branch to adopt a zero-trust approach for securing microprocessor chips in military computing and weapon systems, FedScoop reported Monday.

The former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency director noted that a zero-trust architecture has the potential to avert the domino effect that a compromised part could have on a whole system.

“You don’t have to wait too long before another news story comes out about another vulnerability that was just discovered,” Coleman said at a Hudson Institute-hosted virtual event Monday.

USAF began migrating some mission-critical applications to a zero-trust environment in January as part of its push for tighter network security amid remote work arrangements.

Separately, the Defense Information Systems Agency released DOD’s initial zero-trust reference architecture in May to help military branches prevent unauthorized access to mission-critical assets.

The Hanscom AF Base in Massachusetts recently teamed up with the Air Combat Command’s cyberspace and information dominance unit to develop a software-based perimeter with zero-trust tools.

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