The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the federal government’s workforce to cloud-based telework and agency leaders need to address security concerns around access to sensitive information. Even before COVID-19, the risk associated with securing federal IT systems and their underlying data remained high after a variety of high-profile attacks, such as the 2016 breach at the Office of Personnel Management. According to Dan Prieto from Google Cloud, agencies need to continue to evolve both policies an...
Sep 29, 2020•15 min
Agencies that are implementing the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program have an opportunity to use their CDM data to increase the value of cyberdefense and cyber-operations programs. There's a wealth of sensor data for CDM reporting that has an untapped value. Operationalizing it lets CDM become more than a compliance program, says Splunk's Frank Dimina. Fusing CDM data with other information like perimeter traffic, IPS and firewall data can actually increase insights for the SOC. This ...
Sep 23, 2020•12 min
Defense Department agencies and their mission partners that are looking to work on projects in a DOD-authorized cloud environment can do so almost immediately — and at significantly lower costs — by using a program called milCloud 2.0, says an executive leading the program. The milCloud 2.0 program, which is supported by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and GDIT, is designed specifically to help DOD agencies accelerate adoption of cloud services. The milCloud 2.0 platform is a fit-f...
Sep 14, 2020•11 min
The shift to remote work during the pandemic has given ransomware attackers a wider foothold to exploit IT vulnerabilities, forcing federal IT leaders to build new trust mechanisms and develop stronger safeguards to secure their data, say security experts in a new FedScoop podcast. The sudden increase in personal computing devices connecting to agency networks — and the ability to compromise the home networks they dial in from — have made it easier for ransomware hackers to find pathways into ag...
Aug 31, 2020•14 min
Social safety nets have proven to be especially vital during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. But in some cases, the underlying legacy IT infrastructure supporting the modern delivery of those services has failed them. Artificial intelligence and machine learning, however, have played an increasingly important role in helping agencies adapt to the challenges of the pandemic — particularly with volume and scale. “Volume is a significant problem for all of the social safety net programs. They are...
Aug 28, 2020•11 min
Federal agencies are finding more ways to adopt robotic process automation (RPA) tools to meet the needs of citizens and to help their employees use their time more productively. Agency leaders from Customs and Border Protection and Department of Labor discuss how they are offloading mundane business tasks so federal workers can focus on more valuable work. “Most adoption of RPA starts in back-office applications. It starts out in finance, HR and IT services" and reduces the instances of human e...
Aug 27, 2020•19 min
As federal agencies have worked to engage more with citizens in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve looked to artificial intelligence to help with the spike in people seeking information and services. Agencies saw a major uptick in citizens just wanting more information on how the virus is spread, its symptoms and how many people had contracted it. As measures kicked in to stop the spread of the virus, almost immediately that transitioned into Americans seeking services like unemployment....
Aug 17, 2020•15 min
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a greater need to analyze data from outside government agencies' purview to better inform decisions on how and when employees should return to offices — things like travel patterns, supply chains or health developments. In this podcast, experts discuss data management and analysis tools to help agency leaders mitigate health risks and supply chain weakness throughout the pandemic. Sponsored by TIBCO. Guests (left to right): Cuong Nguyen, Vice President, Federal Sal...
Aug 05, 2020•11 min
As employees across government work from home, collaboration tools are increasingly critical to maintaining productivity. However, when enabling both productivity and efficiency, there are boundaries to how much you can really gain, and the boundaries are finite, says Smartsheet's Chris Aherne in this podcast. He cites a study from Deloitte showing that digital transformation is “a game of diminishing returns, even as labor productivity is rising.” He discusses a new form of enterprise collabora...
Aug 04, 2020•13 min
As agencies at all levels of government look to offer citizens tailored experiences similar to what they get in the private sector, predictive analytics are becoming an increasingly important part of that interaction. In the private sector, consumers now expect a personalized experience in the first minutes or hours after interacting with an entity and public sector organizations should be no different. “Really, if you think about it, agencies from public health, to post offices or similar const...
Aug 03, 2020•10 min
Open source solutions are becoming an increasingly important part of enterprise systems. And in many cases, they’re giving federal agencies a superior and more secure alternative to using proprietary applications. There are hundreds of thousands of open source projects out there today, and demand for enterprise open source solutions continues to grow, according to Alan Clark, who works in SUSE’s CTO Office focusing on emerging technologies and open source. One reason, he says, stems from the evo...
Jul 29, 2020•14 min
Recent advances in microprocessor architecture and performance are giving federal agencies reasons to take a second look at upgrading their legacy infrastructure, rather than just moving their operations to the cloud. “One of the things that we think is really changing is [the need to] erase old technical debt … and drive digital transformation and security transformation,” says Heath Muchmore. Today’s faster, more flexible and efficient microprocessor offerings enable the new workloads of AI, m...
Jul 22, 2020•16 min
Doing business with the Department of Defense has never been easy. But it’s about to get more complicated for tens of thousands of defense contractors and suppliers who must now prove they can meet a complex set of cybersecurity requirements as part of the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program. CMMC is DoD’s latest attempt to stem the tide of intellectual property loss and data exfiltration within its complex supply chain. “The United States is losing between $600 ...
Jul 22, 2020•18 min
Department of Defense (DOD) agencies and their partners want to capitalize on the speed, scale and analytic power of the cloud to tackle artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads. However, elevated security requirements, timing and budgets tend to limit which projects can actually move to the cloud — or whether they get done at all. The good news is that milCloud 2.0 — operated in partnership with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and GDIT — is helping defense agencies o...
Jul 13, 2020•9 min
The pandemic and subsequent shift to support remote workers has put renewed focus on the limitations of relying on virtual private networks — and why zero-trust access controls offer greater long-term security. “There are a lot of challenges around scaling VPNs. Agencies that have adopted zero trust earlier were able to get [their remote workforce] up and running quite simply,” says Jose Padin. Padin discusses use cases that show zero trust’s value over traditional VPNs and how agencies benefit,...
Jul 05, 2020•10 min
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the whole notion of going into a government office to interact with an agency came to a stand-still, forcing agency leaders to establish alternative solutions to quickly deliver services to constituents. Fortunately, the availability of open source solutions and a global community of developers have helped IT leaders implement fast and agile cloud solutions. Implementing these solutions has been helped along by the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (I...
Jul 01, 2020•11 min
When it comes to IT modernization, federal agencies commonly face three central challenges: integrating a myriad of systems, rationalizing applications and winning over each system owner to support agencywide infrastructure changes. Those challenges often come to a head when trying to cultivate an agile and secure DevSecOps process. One agency that has demonstrated surprising success in overcoming those challenges — in the face of daunting deadlines — is the U.S. Census Bureau. This was this the...
Jun 24, 2020•14 min
Zero-trust security architecture is changing the way IT leaders think about access to federal agency networks and resources. That includes how to meet the needs of employees and contractors for whom physical personal identity verification (PIV) credentials and Common Access Cards (CAC) have been the primary method for authenticating access to federal IT systems. The rapid surge in telework during the current pandemic has made clear, physical authentication controls present a significant obstacle...
Jun 22, 2020•12 min
Public officials across the nation have come under extraordinary pressures to keep up with the demands for public services. But they’ve also shown a remarkable ability to innovate in a hurry, says IBM's Jay Bellissimo. While much of that innovation was driven by necessity, “it illustrates the potential to transform government faster than many would have thought possible,” he says. “What we’ve heard from many of our clients was that they were surprised — both by how easy it was to innovate on the...
Jun 16, 2020•17 min
A new generation of open source solutions for high-performance computing are helping federal agencies tackle complex data and modeling challenges, such as climate simulations and fraud detection, according to a leading open source software expert. High-performance computing (HPC) solutions, together with available cloud services, allow government agencies to not only generate high-resolution models, but also have a scalable, sustainable and manageable way to store the research. “Thinking about t...
Jun 09, 2020•10 min
Defense agencies looking for a faster way to acquire and utilize cloud services may be overlooking a unique cloud platform already at their fingertips. That platform — milCloud 2.0 — is a fit-for-purpose commercial cloud service designed to meet the unique mission critical requirements of the Defense Department and its mission partners – including the military services, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the Pentagon and its 4th Estate Agencies. Sponsored by GDIT. Guest: Jeffrey Phelan, ...
May 26, 2020•12 min
The massive shift to telework in recent weeks has put enormous pressures on federal, state and local IT departments, given the scale and complexity involved in shifting operations. But there may be a silver lining, as IT leaders are in a stronger position to advocate for more modern and out-of-the-box solutions that can deliver services faster or more flexibly. Steve McMahon, Interim CIO at Splunk, can relate to what agency IT departments are going through. He shares some of the steps his organi...
May 18, 2020•14 min
IT executives are increasingly recognizing the importance of open source software as a way to preserve their investment options, reduce vendor lock-in and build more agility into their systems. SUSE's Melissa Di Donato shares her perspective on how the open source movement is continuing to grow in importance to enterprise IT decision makers, as well as use cases for ways that government agencies can take greater advantage of open-source solutions. Sponsored by SUSE. Guest: Melissa Di Donato, CEO...
May 12, 2020•13 min
Zero-trust architecture is gaining widening attention from agency IT leaders and federal policy-makers alike. As agency network connections grow more complex, and the number of distributed applications and remote users continues to expand, CISOs see zero-trust strategies as a critical way forward to keep agency systems and users secure. IT veteran Jim Richberg shares practical steps agency leaders can take to start building a zero-trust security environment. Sponsored by Fortinet. Guest: Jim Ric...
May 11, 2020•9 min
Chief information security officers are working diligently to ensure the productivity of temporarily homebound agency employees, while still adhering to the fundamentals of effective cybersecurity practices. Because employees are connecting working remotely, often with their own equipment, there is an increased risk of an employee exposing agency networks to a whole host of security risks. IT departments need to keep on top of network modeling and cyber-hygiene practices to keep remote workers s...
Apr 30, 2020•12 min
The current work environment is prioritizing cloud-enabled collaboration tools for agencies, but without the network tools and bandwidth needed, says IT expert. Sponsored by Fortinet. Guest: Jim Richberg, field CISO at Fortinet Look for more coverage of “Security Transformation in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen
Apr 28, 2020•9 min
Agencies accommodating a larger remote workforce need a more holistic view of their networks that looks across all security layers. Cybersecurity experts from Cisco discuss new tools that allow CIOs and CISOs to quickly establish an integrated threat intelligence environment across multiple domains. Sponsored by Cisco. Guests from Cisco: Peter Romness, Cybersecurity Principal for U.S. Public Sector; Will Ash, Sr. Director for U.S. Public Sector Cybersecurity; Doug Cowan, Federal Civilian Leader ...
Apr 20, 2020•12 min
As agencies scramble for a solution to keep serving constituents and delivering on their mission, IT leaders must address several key challenges at once – including endpoint security, encrypted data transmission and bandwidth capacity, says former federal cybersecurity official, Jim Richberg. What’s helping them keep up with an expanding set of cloud and other remote connectivity capabilities help address expanded security risks inherent in the telework surge? Sponsored by Fortinet. Guest: Jim R...
Apr 15, 2020•12 min
An increase in remote workers offers adversaries more opportunities to exploit vulnerabilities, but DNS security tools can help agencies stem attacks at the edge, says security expert. Sponsored by Akamai Technologies. Guest: Patrick Sullivan, CTO for Security Strategy, Akamai Technologies Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen
Apr 13, 2020•10 min
As more government employees work remotely, agency IT teams can rapidly secure access at scale with cloud-based identity authentication, says a cybersecurity veteran. Sponsored by Duo Security, now a part of Cisco. Guest: Sean Frazier, Advisory CISO, Duo Security Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen
Apr 08, 2020•9 min
