Inside Interior’s IT Shakeup: Lou Eichenbaum on Zero Trust, Culture, and Collaboration

September 18, 2025

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The Department of the Interior is in the middle of a major IT transformation, and Lou Eichenbaum, who recently stepped down as Chief Information Security Officer, says it is changing the way the department delivers technology services. Speaking with Francis Rose on Fed Gov Today, Lou shares how Interior consolidated all of its IT resources and 2210s into a single organization — a first-of-its-kind effort for the department — as part of phase one of its modernization journey.

Lou explains that Interior has historically operated as a collection of separate bureaus, each with its own IT organization. That changed in April, when all IT resources were unified into one centralized team. “It was honestly kind of amazing to see how everyone could get together and focus and make this happen,” he says. The goal is to create an enterprise service model that supports the entire department, from the National Park Service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Indian Education.

But Lou is quick to point out that technology alone doesn’t make a consolidation successful. The cultural piece, he says, is “definitely the hardest part.” For years, bureaus worried that consolidation would mean losing their mission focus. Lou emphasizes that Interior worked hard to reassure staff that their role is still to deliver mission-critical services — keeping parks safe, ensuring the Hoover Dam functions properly, and supporting education on native lands — even as IT becomes more centralized.

Security has been a central part of the transformation. As a former zero trust program manager, Lou is passionate about embedding those principles into everything Interior does. He says multi-factor authentication was one of the first hurdles. In 2022, only about 30% of Interior’s systems were compliant with MFA. After three and a half years of collaborative work, that number now stands at 97%. Lou credits “MFA sprints” that brought bureaus together to solve problems and implement solutions quickly.

Interior also invested in a cultural adoption program for zero trust. Lou says more than 200 IT professionals earned zero trust certifications, helping spread awareness and best practices across the department. The team also engaged directly with field staff, park rangers, and HR professionals to understand their challenges and improve user experience. For example, they streamlined access to HR systems with single sign-on and MFA, making the process both easier and more secure.

Lou believes this focus on collaboration and communication is key to sustaining change. Interior even invited end users to speak at events like NASA presentations to share how zero trust improved their work. “We didn’t want it just to be about security,” Lou says. “One of the primary strategies was to improve customer experience as well.”

As Interior moves into the next phases of its modernization effort, Lou’s insights show that unifying technology and people around mission outcomes is the path forward.