Government entities hold massive amounts of data within their cyber walls, and the utilization and protection of this data is a top priority for leaders across government. With an ever-evolving threat landscape and a workforce that often works outside the office, what do leaders need to do to ensure critical data — and the public’s sensitive data — are secure? What roles do emerging technologies play in the protection of such...

Data is a key mission driver. There is no effective AI without good data. ‘Good’ here encompasses all the practices needed to maximize the use of data for the mission. These include data ingest and management, data security, making sense of data through analytics, and secure sharing of data products. Organizations that treat data as an asset rather than an expense are best positioned to unleash its potential. This forum will discus...

Power grids, water systems, transportation networks and other vital services are essential to communities but lack substantial cyber defenses. Their vulnerabilities make them tempting targets, whether for nation-states or cybercriminals. For instance, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning earlier this year that a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group already has footholds in multiple networks operated by...

Digital technologies—particularly cloud innovations—are a top priority for the Pentagon as it looks to the future of warfare. To stay ahead, the DOD has invested significant resources into cloud tech designed to allow data to be shared more efficiently across the service branches. Cloud will change how the Pentagon communicates, stores, and processes data. But the technology is still evolving, and there are many challenges to imple...

States’ voter registration systems and voter access have undergone a host of changes over the past five years, thanks in large part to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many states expanded vote-by-mail options, stepped up automatic voter registration programs, or both. Cities took action, as well – Los Angeles, for instance, has overhauled its voting system infrastructure, using open source, the cloud, and cybersecurity partnerships to updat...

The cyber-attack surface has exploded to include more than just hardware and on premises devices. This can make implementing CDM and achieving success even more difficult-- one of the most common challenges has always been finding the time and resources to do so. So how are agency cyber leaders keeping up? While the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program is now a dozen years...

When FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks publicly about the cyberthreat posed by the Chinese government to U.S. critical infrastructure, it is past time to take the danger seriously. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] has made it clear that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage, and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to...

The internet is an increasingly dangerous place. The FBI warns of Chinese threats to U.S. critical infrastructure, while the National Security Agency releases guidance for strengthening AI system security. Meanwhile, agencies still wrestle with phishing, ransomware and myriad other threats that occur every day. At the same time, government organizations are expected to implement zero trust architectures, improve identity and access management,...

Administering elections falls on the shoulders of state and territorial governments. It is not surprising, then, that there are so many different approaches, technologies, and processes in place to handle election infrastructure. The problems that befall election infrastructure are many, varied, and often well publicized. In Maricopa County, Ariz., ballots were too lightly printed to be read by scanners during the 2022 midterms. Multnomah Coun...

No matter how quickly technology has changed over the past few decades, nothing matches the speed with which AI has begun to transform how agencies operate. In response to the changing landscape, in October 2023, the Biden administration released two frameworks, the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence and the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Blueprint for an AI Bill...