Cyber threats to federal agencies continue to evolve, requiring equal agility in defending against them. To address the scope of the risk, the White House released Executive Order (EO) 14028 on improving the nation’s cybersecurity in May 2021. It outlined security best practices, including how the federal government must advance toward a zero trust architecture to keep pace with today’s dynamic and increasingly complex cyber threat...

The Office of Management and Budget issued its guidance in January on meeting the requirements for agency networks to implement a zero trust architecture strategy. The purpose of the mandate is to defend against sophisticated penetrations by adversaries, whether nation-states or criminals, and it emphasized that identity management and access controls are key components. Taken together, identity and access controls mean that privileged access...

Federal agencies have embraced cloud strategies as foundational to their transition to digital government, but their approaches come in many different flavors of cloud. As they’ve come to see the benefits, more agencies are adopting a hybrid cloud structure – one or more public and private cloud services that operate as separate but integrated entities. Hybrid cloud provides the cost optimization, agility and scalability of public...

Cybersecurity usually is at a disadvantage against bad actors. It must focus, first and foremost, on defense – protecting assets and information – while hostile interests keep finding new ways to launch their attacks, such as the rise of ransomware. Of Gartner's top seven trends in cybersecurity for 2022, a majority of them are about risks and playing defense. To strengthen defenses, the infrastructure law signed by President Biden...

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in federal civilian agencies could be considered fairly widespread, if the label includes such applications as robotic process automation and machine learning. But these are just baby steps – AI has the potential to provide resiliency to agencies, whether responding to disruptions in operations or providing better customer experiences. Incorporating AI into agencies’ digital operations requir...

Even before the pandemic, U.S. K-12 school districts were undergoing a digital transformation - digitizing paper-based processes and adopting ‘smart’ technologies for core services, including facilities management, transportation, HR and staffing, business services, and teaching and learning. The pandemic accelerated those trends, in support of providing online learning to children sheltering at home. But this also means that schoo...

The Department of Defense can only transform itself as fast as its slowest workflow. At the foundation of DoD’s various warfare capabilities – including cyber, electronic, and information – is the push to transform its administrative advantage in “Workflow Warfare.” These elements of warfare are the backend processes that make a large agency run effectively and connect IT, HR, finance, procurement, workplace, and...

The worst of the pandemic may be past, but after two years of employees having to work remotely, many state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies find their workers want to continue working from home. Given that agencies were able to seamlessly transition to digital delivery of services, hybrid work continues to play a role in the government workforce. But many state and local agencies are strapped for funding and need to find ways to lower...

According to the National Association of State CIOs, the top two enterprise risks faced by state governments in 2022 are cybersecurity and technology. Cybersecurity includes everything from data protection and ransomware to identity theft and stolen network credentials. Technology risks include aging or obsolete systems, data management, and handling cloud portfolios, to name a few. Addressing these risks is part of modernizing and transformin...

The U.S. military is focused on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into its strategic decision-making, from analyzing intelligence, to enhancing weapon systems platforms such as aircraft and ships that do not require human operators, to providing recommendations on the battlefield. But the United States is not alone in seeking to harness AI for military purposes. Other nations, such as China, are seeking to do the same – a 21st cen...