Everyone has seen media reports that Russian soldiers are using personal cellphones, rather than encrypted communications, because they made the mistake of destroying 4G and 5G towers. In military terms, they find themselves operating in a “denied environment,” because they accidentally rendered their comms network inoperable.All soldiers in a combat situation are operating at the “tactical edge,” where things like limi...

Ever since the White House issued its Cybersecurity Executive Order in May 2021, a lot of attention has been paid to the concept of zero trust embedded as its core objective. But the reason to get to zero trust is to protect the data – after all, what do system intruders want? To read, or alter, or copy the data, which they can then use for their own purposes, from monetizing intellectual property to stealing someone’s identity to...

Safeguarding customer access yields better service Federal agencies have faced unprecedented demands over the past few years, as the pandemic shut down physical offices, forcing employees to work from home and requiring agencies to completely rethink how to provide services. Data breaches and accelerating ransomware attacks have harmed agencies’ operations just as they became dependent on online delivery of services. Now agencies are bei...

Last year, the U.S. healthcare system faced unimaginable demands created by the pandemic. Unfortunately, 2021 also was a banner year for healthcare data breaches – more than 40 million individuals’ health records were exposed. Nor are the cyber threats limited to personal records. Ransomware attacks locked down and encrypted hospitals’ and health departments’ data, and the Food and Drug Administration issued a Class I r...

Words like “bureaucracy” and “red tape” often come to mind when folks think about government, but the quality of customer service is changing – for the better. In December 2021, the White House issued its "Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government." In conjunction with the President's Management Agenda addressing customer experience, agencies ha...

On January 19, 2022, the White House issued National Security Memorandum 8 (NSM) to improve the cybersecurity of National Security, Department of Defense, and Intelligence Community Systems. The memorandum requires National Security Systems to employ network cybersecurity measures equal to or greater than those required of federal civilian networks in Executive Order 14028, issued in May 2021. The NSM builds on several parts of the EO, includi...

Here in the United States, one of the most visible actions taken to address climate change is the federal government’s focus on zero-emission vehicles and the supporting infrastructure. This is an area where the government plans to lead by example. Listen as experts from both the public and private sectors discuss the concept of Future Histories, Laws of Zero in planning for an electric vehicle future. Topics covered include: electrifyin...

Better customer experiences build trust in government programs When the White House issued its Executive Order on “Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government” in December 2021, almost three dozen agencies across 17 departments were designated High Impact Service Providers (HISPs) – agencies which, because of their large customer bases or critical services (or both), have a sig...

Government agencies everywhere generate massive amounts of data. For many agencies, it is the core of their operations, whether processing benefits applications, screening financial transactions for illegal activities, measuring the impact of weather events, or myriad other uses. Data is critical to making DevOps (DevSecOps, too) work. It is the reason migrating to the cloud opens up such possibilities for new services. It is why setting up a...

It has been a tough few years for state and local agencies to deliver services to their constituents. The pandemic shut down physical offices, forcing employees to work from home and requiring agencies to completely rethink how to provide services. Data breaches and ransomware attacks have harmed agencies’ operations just as they became dependent on online delivery of services. Now agencies are being warned of the possibility of new wave...