After decades of delay, cybersecurity has become a defining issue for the United States. In response, when the White House laid out its zero trust requirements in January 2022, it set an ambitious goal – that all agencies have their zero trust infrastructure in place before October 1, 2024. This is because of the reality of the digital age: a persistent threat environment is the norm in the IT world, and agencies have to assume they...

Military contractors of all types are trying to work through the Department of Defense’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0. It has been something of a moving target, as the Department of Defense has changed the certification model from five levels in CMMC 1.0 to three in the current version, to better align with existing federal standards and cut red tape for small and mid-sized companies. But the purpose of the CMMC...

A recent study concluded that government agencies are deploying mixed-IT environments - whether on-prem, public cloud, CSPs, MSPs, edge, colocation - at a high rate and that hybrid multicloud is projected to grow almost 5 times over the next three years. Government agencies are rethinking their cloud strategies to meet evolving priorities and mandates and how to address this complexity, especially in the face of IT staffing and skills shortage...

When the log4j vulnerability was first identified in late 2021, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency responded very rapidly, including giving all federal agencies less than a week to identify and patch all their affected systems, and coordinating a nationwide response to encourage the private sector to do the same. But the vulnerability is likely to dog agencies and the private sector alike for years. There are at least two rea...

Cyber attacks are on the increase across all levels of government – and state and local governments are often targeted because they have fewer resources for security. For instance, an October 2022 survey found that more than half of state and local governments faced ransomware attacks in 2021, and just one in five organizations successfully stopped the attack. Strengthening the security and resilience of these agencies’ systems req...

The universe of artificial intelligence applications is going through its own Big Bang right now. As artificial intelligence (AI) applications proliferate across the internet ecosystem, other changes are being triggered, from the commitment to R&D funding to workforce development to new initiatives in higher education. As public awareness grows of AI’s potential and how it may affect them, there still are issues to be resolved. For i...

Cyber attacks are on the increase across all levels of government – and state and local governments are often targeted because they have fewer resources for security. For instance, an October 2022 survey found that more than half of state and local governments faced ransomware attacks in 2021, and just one in five organizations successfully stopped the attack. Strengthening the security and resilience of these agencies’ systems req...

The entire concept of zero trust can be boiled down to four words – never trust, always verify. But short, simple statements usually have a lot of moving parts to make them reality. When the Office of Management and Budget issued its Federal Zero Trust Strategy in January 2022, it set the end of Fiscal Year 2024 – September 30, 2024 – as the completion date for a host of cybersecurity standards and objectives to be completed...

The state of Colorado is undertaking a top-to-bottom modernization of its IT infrastructure, aimed at achieving what the Governor’s Office of Information Technology describes as four "wildly important goals." Four major initiatives (tech transformation, broadband access, digital government services, and enhanced employee engagement) are intended to deliver more and better digital services that improve residents’ lives and increase...

One of the biggest social issues the U.S. faces today is how to achieve health equity, where everyone has a fair and just opportunity to reach and maintain their best level of personal health. The challenges are many, systemic, and interconnected – economic, institutional, educational, and social barriers prevent many with the greatest needs from being able to access the care and information they require. Over the past decades there have...