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...

In May 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14028 on improving government cybersecurity. The order required that all federal agencies develop a plan to implement zero trust architectures for their IT systems, and set aggressive timelines for achieving this goal by 2024. The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines zero trust as “an evolving set of cybersecurity paradigms that move defenses from static, network-based...

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...

Federal agencies, both civilian and military, are seeing opportunities to expand their mission to serve the public through the application of new technologies. Leading the way: Unlocking the potential of 5G to power leading-edge IoT applications. Many agencies now have multiple sensors and edge computing devices that need blazing fast, low-latency, stable connections, particularly if they are in remote or hard-to-reach locations. For instance,...

“Workflow warfare” is a term within the Department of Defense that calls attention to and places value on back office functions, which serve a critical role in mission success but can be overlooked when considering modernization and digital transformation. That concept is applicable beyond the boundaries of the military, however; accelerating those workflows will allow faster transformation and provide advantages in meeting any age...

In May of 2021, the White House issued the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, mandating that federal agencies begin taking decisive steps to modernize their approach to cybersecurity, with zero trust as the foundation. In that time, federal agencies have been diligently working to meet the Executive Order’s mandates. Last month, the Office of Management and Budget released M-22-16 Administration Cybersecurity...

The Top 10 list of enterprise risks facing CIOs in state, local, tribal and territorial agencies is both comprehensive and disturbing, covering everything from cybersecurity to compliance to workforce. High on that list is the technology, including how to manage and work with their cloud portfolios. These public agencies are looking to manage their data in public and private clouds, hybrid clouds or multi-clouds, whether on a daily basis, thro...

State and local governments identify moving to the cloud and incorporating artificial as high on their list of priorities. For instance, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency started using AI and analytics to import weather data in real time and develop a base analysis, which the agency’s meteorologists review and revise. This creates forecasts for weather alerts that can be sent quickly to vulnerable populations, including locations ou...