Just as real-world governments, militaries and diplomats are working to contain kinetic violence in 2022, cyber conflicts in the virtual world are taking place almost every week. While Americans and American agencies have not been as targeted as other countries – Ukraine, Finland, Greece, the United Kingdom, Montenegro, and Latvia, to name just a few – cyber defenders are faced with an onslaught of attacks, whether from criminal or...

The federal government is well ahead of state and local governments in the implementation of a zero trust architecture because of the White House Executive Order on Cybersecurity last year. But state and local agencies see it in their immediate future - 67 percent of state CIOs who responded to the 2021 Annual State CIO Survey anticipate that introducing or expanding a zero-trust framework will receive more attention in the next two to three y...

Modernization is a Journey, not a Destination. Federal agencies raced to update their systems and move as many programs as possible to the cloud during the pandemic. But federal leaders realize that modernization is a continuing process that includes, but is not limited to, updating IT equipment and data centers. It also means upgrading networks and connections, software and services, security, workforce, and acquisition processes. At this sum...

Cybersecurity professionals throughout all levels of government and the private sector are painfully aware of the risks to their own networks posed by third parties with authorized access – but insufficient security measures of their own. From a parts supplier responding to an order sent via email to local government contractors who remotely monitor wastewater plant performance. For instance, a California student-tracking software compan...

Ransomware threats are targeting state and local agencies with increasing frequency. According to the Verizon Data Breach Incident Report 2022, 80% of attacks on public sector systems were financially motivated, and 78% of the breaches came from outside the network. At the same time, some state legislatures have banned state agencies from paying ransomware, with other states considering the same approach. These trends are on a collision course...

Just as the pandemic changed the American workplace, it had a major disruptive effect on colleges and universities across the country, forcing them to adopt new remote learning initiatives and revealing the technological shortcomings that campuses faced. At the same time, it opened opportunities. During the pandemic, Carnegie Mellon University used a rapidly deployed private wireless solution to power live video streams on high definition came...

Current guidance has laid out the cybersecurity priorities that federal agencies should adhere to for the upcoming fiscal year 2024 budget cycle. Civilian agencies will need to focus on making investments within the three cyber investment priority areas: Strengthening the Foundations of Our Digitally-Enabled Future, Deepening Cross-Sector Collaboration in Defense of Critical Infrastructure, and Improving the Defense and Resilience of Governmen...

Modernization is integral in the development of the Federal workforce as organizations fight to keep up with the private sector. Organizations and agencies need to begin to adopt more cutting edge technologies, such as automation of workflow processes, in order to be more forward-thinking and competitive. In order to fully reach a new potential within our Federal workforce, agencies need to center the implementation process as their goal. This...

Two years of pandemic living made clear the depth and breadth of the digital divide – states lacking robust internet and wireless infrastructure discovered the gaps that made it far more difficult to provide essential services in a work-from-home world. Today, states and localities are considering investment in such diverse areas as IoT, emergency preparedness, school security, and strengthening their logistics and supply chain managemen...

Combating modern-day software supply chain attacks is significantly more complicated than in the past. Adversaries are getting craftier and are no longer waiting to exploit publicly disclosed vulnerabilities to launch a cyberattack. By shifting their focus “upstream,” adversaries can infect a single open source component, which will then be distributed “downstream” using legitimate software workflows and update mechanis...