When the Navy CIO released the Service’s Information Superiority Vision 2.0 last year, its focus was on facilitating the secure movement of information to support warfighters, by emphasizing three pillars – optimize, secure, and decide. For Navy IT users, “optimize” means utilizing modern software and services such as cloud adoption; “secure” refers to implementing zero trust and increasing focus on cybersec...

Gen Z is reshaping the workforce—bringing fresh perspectives, valuable hard and soft skills, and new expectations for what they want out of employers and their career journeys. There is an incredible opportunity for federal agencies to attract the next generation of talent to the public sector. This is particularly important because federal agencies are at a crossroads in their talent acquisition efforts. Approximately 30% of employees a...

There are few things worse for agency efficiency – or IT employee morale – than having fragmented service requests, overwhelming workflows, and siloed knowledge. It is not that IT employees aren’t working hard to solve problems, it’s that the tools they have been using cannot scale up as fast as user needs accumulate. In today’s rapidly shifting federal landscape, agencies must modernize operations and strengthen...

The federal government has been on a journey to modernize its IT infrastructure in support of the mission and the strategic initiatives that each executive department has identified. This commitment to modernization is driving the federal government to explore new technologies that can enhance its operational capabilities and infrastructure. The implementation of 5G promises to provide faster network speeds, ultra-low latency connectivity, and...

There have been several cyber attacks recently that were launched through users’ mobile devices, often targeting high-profile government officials. For instance, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint statement in November 2024 that their ongoing investigation into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) targeting of commercial telecommunications infrastructure revealed a broad and sig...

Drones and robots can extend the capabilities of first responders. In December 2024, a search and rescue team in Colorado used drones to find a 10-year-old boy who was lost in the mountains south of Denver. The team also used a drone to deliver a plastic bag with protein bars, gel packs, water, a winter hat and a thermal blanket for him until authorities arrived at the site. In Alaska, firefighters used a robot to drop needed supplies to crews...

When a disaster strikes, the infrastructure needed to support recovery usually is hit hard, as well. Tornados take down cell towers, buildings, tear up roads; floods damage water treatment plants, homes, bridges; wildfires destroy everything in their path. First responders – the people going into harm’s way to save people and property – need as much information as possible about the conditions they will face. The U.S. Fire Ad...

Data analytics demonstrate their value for both public safety and emergency management every day. The National League of Cities, for example, promotes the usefulness of Data-Informed Community Engagement (DICE), pairing crime data and analytics with community-driven risk concerns. Data-driven policing has been in use since the 1970s, but the advent of the cloud and edge computing has put it at the fingertips of law enforcement. Similarly, emer...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming cybersecurity for the better—empowering teams to detect threats faster, reduce false positives, and identify risky behavior before it becomes a breach. But there are risks associated with AI: first, that AI tools currently are new to organizations and under-regulated for their own cybersecurity, so require careful review; also, as defenders become more sophisticated with those AI tools, so do...

One of the most beneficial practices any agency can implement is achieving and maintaining Continuous Authorization to Operate (cATO). It allows an organization to maintain ongoing authorization for their systems and software, rather than having to obtain a one-time ATO for each deployment. Gaining a cATO requires agencies to implement continuous monitoring of the security of their systems and practicing active cyber defense measures that proa...