DoD Zero Trust Lead Randy Resnick Retires, Joining Private Sector Firm IGEL
Pentagon Chief Zero Trust Officer Randy Resnick is retiring from government service after leading the department's ambitious FY2027 network security overhaul. He will transition to cloud security vendor IGEL as Field CTO.
Randy Resnick, Chief Zero Trust Officer for the Department of Defense and head of the Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office (ZT PfMO) within the DoD Chief Information Officer’s office, will retire from government service this Friday. Resnick led the development and implementation of the Pentagon’s baseline framework aimed at deploying zero trust architecture across all defense networks by the end of fiscal year 2027. Following his departure, Resnick will enter the private sector as Field Chief Technology Officer for Government and Critical Industries at IGEL, an endpoint management and cloud security software vendor.
Resnick joined the DoD CIO office in January 2022 following more than three decades at the National Security Agency (NSA), where he served as the agency’s zero trust strategic lead and held key roles in cybersecurity innovation and information assurance engineering. Notably, Resnick served as the founding chief of the NSA’s Red Team, leveraging offensive cyber techniques to evaluate network resilience, and spearheaded the creation of joint zero trust testbed laboratories alongside the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and U.S. Cyber Command.
Resnick’s departure comes at a critical juncture for defense cybersecurity as military services and defense agencies work against the clock to meet the FY2027 deadline for full zero trust operational capability. Under his leadership, the ZT PfMO established standardized execution roadmaps, vendor reference architectures, and targeted capability pillars designed to eliminate legacy perimeter-based security models. His transition to the private sector highlights the accelerating movement of senior defense cyber architects to commercial software vendors focused on edge security, endpoint management, and critical infrastructure resilience.
For defense executives and industry partners, Resnick’s exit shifts attention to leadership continuity within the ZT PfMO during a vital execution phase. As defense components transition from architecture design to active software deployment, commercial contractors seeking to integrate into the Pentagon’s zero trust ecosystem must monitor incoming CIO leadership to maintain alignment with established zero trust capability pillars and emerging AI-driven cyber defense capabilities. (Source: Washington Technology)
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