The federal government has been working to update its policies, architectures and frameworks around digital identity for some time. OMB revised its Identity Credential and Access Management guide in May of 2019 and that National Institute for Standards and Technology has been working on an updated version of its guidance on security and privacy controls for information systems. Then, the pandemic hit, and all programs went into overdrive as ag...

IT modernization has been a federal priority for years, but many agencies still struggle to turn that goal into a practical plan of action. Securing multi-year funding is one challenge, but the fundamental obstacle is often the sheer complexity of transforming government-scale systems. Smart, successful modernization demands a holistic approach that addresses several essential pillars: security, network infrastructure, multi-cloud architecture...

Most government agencies have made the journey to cloud since the Cloud First and Cloud Smart strategies came from OMB starting in 2010. Many organizations have more than one cloud. The challenge becomes blending the different types of cloud and service models to provide access to needed data, while at the same time protecting a much enlarged attack surface created by the large number of workers who are accessing the data remotely. If there is...

The global information technology supply chain has been hit with a growing and unprecedented number of attacks as adversaries attempt to compromise systems with various forms of malware in an attempt to steal or compromise or hold for ransom sensitive information. Federal executives realized how complex the question of supply chain security was in 2017 when officials tried to implement the Department of Homeland Security’s order to remov...

The 2020 election has ushered in a new president but we still face a very divided government. How will this impact the priorities and policies of the Biden Administration? No matter what, the transition to a new president will have a profound impact on outlook for government contracts in 2021 and beyond. Many top-line priorities will remain the same – a focus on COVID-19, cybersecurity, IT modernization and other technology driven initia...

Eight years in, the Continuous Diagnostic and Mitigation program has matured and broadened its offerings significantly. The focus now is on deploying a threat intelligence framework for governmentwide use, integrating the AWARE risk-scoring algorithm and rolling out of security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) to automate vulnerability detection and defensive cyber operations. More extensive and sophisticated use of data in dashboa...

The Federal Data Strategy's action plan was reworked in response to the COVID-19 crisis, while state and local governments are simultaneously expanding health data initiatives and looking for more cost-effective data solutions. Add in the growing importance of data-intensive cyber threat detection and the broad potential of AI and automation, and it becomes clear: Agencies' data challenges are evolving rapidly, and a solid data strategy is mis...

Emerging technologies offer the promise of better, faster, cheaper processing and problem solving, but they also bring the possibility of bias, security breaches and new privacy issues. Most agencies are experimenting on a small scale and testing out standards on privacy and security. Workforce also has been a concern as emerging tech matures—both to ensure displaced workers are reskilled and to make certain the job classifications are a...

Government agencies understand the pain of siloed data, especially as they continue to move data and programs to the cloud, modernize legacy systems, and automate manual processes to meet evolving citizen and employee demands. Connecting and accessing that data can be a challenge, but new technologies and modern integration platforms help accelerate transformation by connecting SaaS, enterprise applications, and other data sources, whether the...

Agencies often need to work with multiple public cloud providers and with on-premises data centers as well. For all the benefits that come with the variety of providers, it also presents challenges when workloads need to be moved from one provider to another and back. This webcast will look at the challenges that agencies face with safeguarding data that will be accessed by a growing VDI workforce and how they are managing the operational comp...