The United States Army is turning to artificial intelligence to speed up its transition to a "zero trust" security model, according to a report published on army.mil.
The effort is led by the Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) Army Software and Innovation Center (ASIC), working in partnership with the Warfighting Acquisition University. Together, these organizations are developing AI-driven tools designed to automate steps along the military's zero trust roadmap.
Zero trust is a cybersecurity philosophy that assumes no user, device, or network connection should be trusted by default — even those already inside a system's perimeter. Every access request must be continuously verified. Implementing it across a sprawling institution like the Army is an enormous undertaking, involving thousands of systems, users, and data flows.
By applying AI to this process, Army innovators aim to reduce the manual labor and time required to identify gaps, enforce policies, and validate compliance with zero trust requirements. Automating these steps could dramatically accelerate a transition that would otherwise take years of painstaking human-led effort.
The partnership between a technical command like CECOM ASIC and an acquisition-focused university signals that the Army is treating this not just as an engineering problem but as an institutional one — embedding AI-assisted security practices into how the military buys and manages technology.
As adversaries grow more sophisticated in targeting military networks, automating the shift to zero trust could prove a critical advantage in defending sensitive defense infrastructure.