Securing Data Exchange in a Zero Trust World with Kiteworks

This episode focuses on secure data exchange in a zero trust environment with a detailed look at Kiteworks, a platform designed to protect sensitive information, enforce compliance, and simplify collaboration. Kiteworks offers end-to-end encryption, zero trust access controls, and integrates with various enterprise tools. It supports large files, complex policies, and multiple data channels, making it suitable for DOD, civilian agencies, law enforcement, and healthcare. Listeners are encouraged to integrate Kiteworks for improved data security and compliance.

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:38 Today’s Focus: Secure Data Exchange in a Zero Trust World
• 01:19 Overview of Kiteworks Platform
• 02:16 Technical Deep Dive into Kiteworks
• 03:11 Kiteworks Deployment and Integration
• 05:13 Use Cases and Success Stories
• 06:27 Conclusion and Call to Action

This episode is brought to you by ATP Gov. Visit us online at www.atpgov.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Bottom Line Upfront, the podcast that cuts through the noise to deliver distilled insights from today’s most important technical webinars, presentations and demonstrations designed for federal and military IT leaders. Each episode breaks down complex technologies into mission ready takeaways, so you get the key points.

Fast. Whether it’s cybersecurity, cloud, architecture, or emerging defense technologies, we highlight what matters most and how trusted integrators like a TP gov can help implement and operationalize these solutions across your agency or command. No fluff. No filler, just the bottom line upfront. Today we’re tackling a critical challenge, secure data exchange in a zero trust world.

Our focus this time, Kiteworks a platform designed to protect sensitive information in transit, enforce compliance, and simplify secure collaboration. As we know, federal agencies are under pressure to comply with executive orders on Zero Trust Meet CMMC requirements for DOD [00:01:00] contractors and ensure FedRAMP compliance for cloud solutions.

Add to that the growing complexity of mission partner environments and the need for attribute based access control, and you’ve got a perfect storm of security and governance challenges. Kiteworks addresses these head-on by unifying secure data exchange compliance and integration into one platform. So what is Kiteworks kind of at a high level.

Kiteworks is, is a 25-year-old company outta San Mateo. We grew up in the file sharing business. Over time, we’ve evolved our platform to incorporate really a, a unified approach to, uh, secure data exchange. So any way that people can externally share data, we have a secured mechanism excluding Chad. Kiteworks is a security focused content communication platform that creates a private data network or PDN for organizations, allowing them to securely share, transfer, and govern sensitive information across email file sharing, manage file transfer, web forms.

And APIs. Kiteworks centralizes these channels into a [00:02:00] single controlled environment so companies can reduce data privacy exposure, and meet regulatory requirements such as GDPR, hipaa and CCPA. The platform provides end-to-end encryption, zero trust, access controls, detailed audit, logging, and metadata tracking.

So let’s take a quick technical deep dive and learn about what makes Kiteworks. Stand out. First of all, Kiteworks, PDN. The Private Data Network is a unified platform designed to control, monitor and secure sensitive data, protecting data in transit and enforcing governance policies. Kiteworks is capable of large file handling, its supports files up to 16 terabytes, which is ideal for high performance compute workloads, CAD drawings, and video evidence.

Kiteworks works seamlessly with SharePoint, OneDrive, Salesforce, box, Dropbox, and many others. Its Policy Engine automates enforcement based on user attributes and document tags, including Microsoft Purview labels. Kiteworks is also capable of digital rights management. It enables view only [00:03:00] access, watermarking and limited printing, which is critical for sensitive documents.

Its encryption and key management is done through customer owned keys. Plus it has support for pg PS Mime and X 5 0 9 certificates. Its deployment options are flexible. You can go on-prem customer cloud, FedRAMP, moderate, and it’s even been deployed in IL six environments for the DOD. So right now we have an IL five and IL six cloud deployment.

In the DOD, we can be deployed on premise or in their cloud instances. It’s the same thing. It’s all, whether it’s FedRAMP, whether it’s on-prem, in their cloud, it’s the same functionality. It’s just who’s managing the infrastructure. Okay? Works also includes real-time mapping to NIST 801, 71 CMMC, HIPAA and CI requirements.

I mean, a lot of people can do, uh, encryption, right? It’s not that sexy. It’s a need. What we really do really well is mapping the auditing, which we do in real time, to the NIST 801 71, which is really foundational to zero trust, hipaa, itar, you know, a lot of the different requirements [00:04:00] out there. But we’re really focusing on kind of our data policy engine so that as you adopt more secure components of Kiteworks, you could have a centralized policy that enforces the behavior of your end users.

And most importantly, Kiteworks also integrates with enterprise tools like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, ldap, and Active Directory, single sign and Multi-Factor authentication Systems, along with SIM platforms and secure protocols such as SFDP and SMTP, while offering add-ons like digital rights management, secure APIs, and advanced governance features Overall.

Kiteworks is designed to give organizations a tightly controlled, highly auditable, and regulation aligned environment for exchanging sensitive content. We don’t typically lead with a PDN. It’s more of a kind of a concept, a journey. I rarely walk into a customer and find them totally unprotected for, uh, data sharing.

There’s usually a specific use case, a problem they’re trying to solve. That starts the conversation. Then as the light bulb goes off, and [00:05:00] I’d like to use the analogy that we’re kind of the Swiss Army knife for data protection. You buy it for the blade, not realizing that the corkscrew, the bottle opener, all the other accessories actually will come into play as they become more familiar with the, uh, with the platform.

So when we look at this in the guise of federal and military use cases, where does it matter Most Kiteworks is perfect for DOD mission partner environments, and IL six deployments for secure collaboration across commands. It also works well in civilian agencies. The Department of Justice IRS and HHS currently use Kiteworks to consolidate multiple solutions and reduce costs.

There’s a new kind of initiative around mission partner environments that has a open source technology called Trusted data format that we have integrated with, which is really a, a second level of encryption tied to attribute based access control, meaning that if I share a file through TDF, with Will only, will, should be able to open that document and even if he saves it to his hard drive and maybe tries to send it to Rob.

Because I [00:06:00] made it read only for Will shouldn’t be able to access data, and that’s becoming, uh, a growing area of the trust for the department and the ic, the Department of Defense and the ic, it will bleed over into civilian, but that’s kind of the A-D-O-D-I-C. Uh, right now. Kiteworks has also seen great success in law enforcement because of the secure transfer of video evidence and freedom of Information Act requests.

It also finds a home in healthcare. It can provide HIPAA compliance for sensitive patient data exchange. So what’s the bottom line? Up front Kiteworks is a secure data exchange with compliance and integration. It supports zero trust CMMC, FedRAMP and mission critical workflows. It handles large files, complex policies, and multi-channel data exchange.

So if you’re ready to strengthen your agency’s data security posture and simplify compliance, integrate Kiteworks into your zero trust architecture and ensure that you get FedRAMP and IL compliance by bundling in Kiteworks with other security solutions for a holistic approach. This means faster deployment and better [00:07:00] alignment with mission objectives, all while reducing risk.

Be sure to reach out to atp gov today@www.atpgov.com, or email info@atpgov.com, or check us out on social media on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening, and be sure to subscribe to the bottom line upfront wherever you get your podcasts. And stay tuned for more distilled insights from the front lines of tech and national security.

So until next time, stay secure. Stay mission ready.

The Bottom Line Up Front, is ATP Gov’s podcast that cuts through the noise to deliver distilled insights from today’s most important technical webinars, presentations and demonstrations designed for federal and military IT leaders. Each episode breaks down complex technologies into mission ready takeaways, so you get the key points.

Fast.

Whether it’s cybersecurity, cloud, architecture, or emerging defense technologies, we highlight what matters most and how trusted integrators like ATP Gov can help implement and operationalize these solutions across your agency or command.

No fluff. No filler, just the bottom line up front.