Federal, state, and local government grant programs support a wide range of critical services, ranging from economic development to disaster recovery to health and human services. Legacy grants management processes can be cumbersome and even subject to waste, fraud, and abuse. This is where technology can help, by simplifying and streamlining processes while strengthening internal controls and providing accurate, real-time visibility for stake...

Cybersecurity in today’s volatile world is understandably critical but translating understanding into practice is challenging, especially as agencies’ resource demands are at an all-time high, competent IT talent is at a premium, and budgets aren’t keeping pace. Continuous regulatory compliance and security risks to organizations and individuals alike keep evolving—making it difficult to plan and implement specific, act...

The challenges of cybersecurity in today’s volatile environment have hit state, local and educational agencies and institutions particularly hard. Their IT shops already faced manpower shortages, outdated hardware and software, threats such as ransomware, and skimpy budgets – all of which have been amplified by the pandemic and its follow-on effects. And now war in a faraway country, involving a nation-state already hostile to the...

The cybersecurity landscape has never been more complicated. The Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted cybersecurity alerts across government agencies and critical infrastructure sectors. After the pandemic forced millions to work from home and security professionals adapted to protecting networks without traditional perimeters, new hybrid work models are emerging. Ransomware wreaked havoc on organizations large and small, government and privat...

It has been more than a decade since the Obama administration adopted a “cloud first” strategy for IT modernization. The policy shifted in 2019 to a “cloud smart” approach. Agencies across the federal government have been including cloud migration in their digital transformation initiatives over this period. But 10 years is a long time for any digital technology, and as cloud computing has matured its long-term drawback...

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program – FedRAMP – has been in place for more than a decade now. It has always been a great vehicle for moving government IT workloads to the cloud and into secure government-approved environments. Increasingly, FedRAMP is enabling faster adoption of cloud services and reducing organizational risks and costs associated with the sustainment of traditional government-owned equipment and...

Warnings from the White House about potential cyber attacks by a hostile nation-state. Security risks in third-party software code. Ransomware paralyzing schools and hospitals. Phishing schemes targeting employees. Talk of cyberwar. It is a very tough time to be a cybersecurity professional. Success in this ecosystem depends on more than technical expertise and knowledge of specific attack countermeasures. Security and IT leaders need a clear...

Everyone has seen media reports that Russian soldiers are using personal cellphones, rather than encrypted communications, because they made the mistake of destroying 4G and 5G towers. In military terms, they find themselves operating in a “denied environment,” because they accidentally rendered their comms network inoperable.All soldiers in a combat situation are operating at the “tactical edge,” where things like limi...

Safeguarding customer access yields better service Federal agencies have faced unprecedented demands over the past few years, as the pandemic shut down physical offices, forcing employees to work from home and requiring agencies to completely rethink how to provide services. Data breaches and accelerating ransomware attacks have harmed agencies’ operations just as they became dependent on online delivery of services. Now agencies are bei...

Government agencies everywhere generate massive amounts of data. For many agencies, it is the core of their operations, whether processing benefits applications, screening financial transactions for illegal activities, measuring the impact of weather events, or myriad other uses. Data is critical to making DevOps (DevSecOps, too) work. It is the reason migrating to the cloud opens up such possibilities for new services. It is why setting up a...