In accordance with the CEO of Cloudflare, the zero belief construction is the reply to the federal government hack

Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, commented on Friday on the cyberattack on the federal government that was exposed earlier this week.

Speaking on CNBC’s Mad Money, the cloud cybersecurity company’s CEO said it was one reason his company is moving to what he calls a “zero trust architecture” to isolate a breach.

“That effectively means when a hacker gets into part of your organization that includes them,” Prince told Jim Cramer. “It’s almost like a bulkhead in a ship, ensuring that a leak in one place doesn’t sink the entire ship.”

The hack, carried out by a nation-state believed to be Russia, gave actors access to several US government agencies, including the Treasury Department, Homeland Security and Commerce Departments, and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Outside of national government, state and local governments, as well as private entities, are believed to have been compromised or at risk, cyber experts say.

Computer security firm FireEye announced that the nifty attack the company was involved in sought information on its government customers. The company’s shares fell 13% after the incident was reported on Dec. 8, but the stock has since climbed to $ 19.23 from $ 13.49 after falling.

The hack alerted a large majority of Fortune 500 companies that there has been a “secret door” through which adversaries can access their networks since early 2020, Prince said.

Cloudflare’s zero trust system requires verification by every user attempting to access a network. This is used to prevent data hacking.

“There will be a lot of cleanup,” he added, “but I think the zero-trust architecture that Cloudflare is putting in place for our customers will, as we go along, help ensure that even if part of a company one Violates this architecture. ” It doesn’t sink the entire ship, and you can essentially make sure that even if the attacker got in through a door, they won’t get past that first room. “

Prince said that both the coronavirus pandemic and the regular occurrence of serious breaches are forcing companies to abandon their old security approaches to cloud-based cybersecurity strategies. He recognized the work that Cloudflare is doing with other security companies like Okta and Crowdstrike.

“By combining these best-of-breed solutions, these new cloud-based approaches, you get a better level of security and can offer every company the same state of the art [tools] that the googles of the world have, “he said.

Cloudflare’s shares were up 2.4% on Friday, trading at $ 83.81. The share has gained 391% since the beginning of the year.