As Federal agencies accelerate their Zero Trust journeys in response to executive mandates and evolving compliance requirements, cybersecurity leaders face a fundamental challenge: they cannot protect what they cannot see. Zero Trust depends on complete, reliable visibility across modern cloud environments and legacy Operational Technology (OT) systems. Without that packet-level visibility, Zero Trust cannot be effectively enforced.

Closing the Network Visibility Gap

Most agencies rely on Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) ports to correspond network traffic to security tools, but this approach can leave security sensors with incomplete data, especially in legacy OT environments. Garland Technology’s network Traffic Access Points (TAPs) address this directly. Passive hardware TAPs sit in line between network devices, duplicating traffic for monitoring tools. TAPs carry no Media Access Control (MAC) or Internet Protocol (IP) address, making them invisible to adversaries and work across virtually any vendor ecosystem without creating new visibility constraints.

For environments that need strict one-way data flow, hardware data diodes add another layer of protection. They enforce unidirectional traffic at the circuit level, replacing or working alongside existing SPAN or mirror ports without requiring a full infrastructure overhaul. With National Cross Domain Strategy & Management Office (NCD SMO) certification in its final stages, hardware-based data diodes offer Federal agencies a compliance-ready path to enforce one-way traffic.

Distributing Visibility Intelligently with Packet Brokers

Complete network visibility across a Federal environment involves more than a single TAP or sensor. Traffic moves across multiple links, environments and speeds, and it must be routed to the right monitoring and security tools. Network packet brokers from Garland Technology help agencies receive data from multiple sources and distribute them.

Packet brokers make large-scale visibility manageable through capabilities including:

• Aggregating traffic from multiple feeds
• Filtering relevant data streams
• Load balancing across tool sets
• Deduplicating redundant packets
• Slicing and timestamping packets for precision analysis
• Tunneling traffic across segmented environments

These features reduce overload and improve monitoring performance. In practice, packet brokers can feed targeted traffic simultaneously into Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms, intrusion detection systems, network performance monitors and other sensors.

In OT environments structured around the Purdue model, packet brokers typically sit at the operations systems level, aggregating traffic from TAPs and SPAN ports at lower network layers and routing it upward, through data diodes where required, into the tool sets where security teams can act.

Converging IT and OT for Zero Trust Compliance

Zero Trust is accelerating IT and OT convergence. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) framework, along with agency-specific guidance, demands continuous verification of users, devices and applications across the entire network. This is especially challenging because many OT devices in Government networks are decades old and cannot support software updates or inline security tooling without disrupting critical operations.

A practical approach is to leave those systems in place while using network TAPs to pull traffic from legacy OT devices without interrupting operations. That allows security platforms to analyze activity, apply threat intelligence and enforce policy at the network level without touching the devices themselves.

This visibility also enables virtual patching. When a firewall platform can identify an OT device’s version and known vulnerabilities, it can block traffic patterns associated with known threats at the network level without interrupting critical operations. Security teams can also tailor the virtual patching profile to the devices in their environment, resulting in a consolidated, visual asset inventory that maps how OT devices are organized across the network.

A Unified Security Fabric for Continuous Assessment

Zero Trust depends on multiple capabilities working together, including identity, access permissions, segmentation, policy enforcement and continuous assessment. At Federal scale, those functions are most effective when they are integrated rather than spread across disconnected tools. That is where Fortinet Federal brings its security fabric alongside Garland Technology’s visibility infrastructure.

A unified next-generation firewall platform, Fortinet Federal’s FortiGate platform combines routing, Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), segmentation and threat detection into a single operating system, FortiOS, reducing blind spots. FortiGate also extends visibility across switches and wireless access points, enabling security teams to enforce policy more consistently across users, devices and applications.

This consolidated visibility supports Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) by applying consistent policy and authentication standards across remote and on-premises users. Threat intelligence further strengthens this model by continuously updating and distributing protections across the environment. FortiGuard Labs sustains this visibility and enforcement through a global threat intelligence network that continuously feeds into Network Operations Center (NOC), Security Operations Center (SOC), Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) and SIEM platforms, enabling teams to investigate threats and respond in a coordinated manner.

A Trusted, Compliant and Isolated Security Supply Chain

For Federal agencies, Zero Trust readiness also depends on the integrity of the security supply chain. Security tools must come from vendors with the structure, compliance posture and operational safeguards required for Federal deployment.

Fortinet Federal delivers industry-leading cybersecurity and secure networking capabilities to the U.S. Government through a dedicated, independently operated and federally aligned organization. Its purpose is to serve as a trusted mission partner—providing validated, secure supply chain assurance as well as high-performance and cost-efficient technology.

On the visibility side, Garland Technology’s American-manufactured hardware purpose-built for network TAPs, packet brokers, inline bypass and data diodes helps agencies scale to full-time continuous monitoring architectures without requiring major platform changes or vendor transitions.

Building Toward a More Secure Future

The path to Zero Trust in Federal environments requires the right partners working together. Garland Technology provides purpose-built visibility infrastructure that reliably delivers packet data across IT and OT environments without disrupting legacy systems or creating new points of failure. Fortinet Federal’s federally vetted, supply-chain-isolated security platform turns that visibility into enforceable policy through threat intelligence, network segmentation, ZTNA and continuous assessment. Together, Garland Technology and Fortinet Federal give agencies the integrated foundation needed to implement Zero Trust at scale, protect critical infrastructure and stay ahead of evolving threats.

To learn more about achieving packet visibility and Zero Trust at scale, watch Fortinet Federal and Garland Technology’s webinar, “From Visibility to Zero Trust: Enabling Federal Agency Cybersecurity at Scale.”

Carahsoft Technology Corp. is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider, supporting Public Sector organizations across Federal, State and Local Government agencies and Education and Healthcare markets. As the Master Government Aggregator for our vendor partners, including Fortinet and Garland Technology, we deliver solutions for Geospatial, Cybersecurity, MultiCloud, DevSecOps, Artificial Intelligence, Customer Experience and Engagement, Open Source and more. Working with resellers, systems integrators and consultants, our sales and marketing teams provide industry leading IT products, services and training through hundreds of contract vehicles. Explore the Carahsoft Blog to learn more about the latest trends in Government technology markets and solutions, as well as Carahsoft’s ecosystem of partner thought-leaders.