Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness

The Department of War realized it was dealing with a supply chain risk of vulnerable vendors; back in 2019 they launched the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. The goal was to ensure defense contractors protected sensitive unclassified information. Over the years it has transitioned from being a "checkbox" compliance to moving way beyond the minimum to pass. During today's interview with...

In this episode of the Federal Tech Podcast, Robert Salvia of Fortress Information Security explains why agencies must move beyond a compliance mindset and adopt continuous risk management. One key insight stands out: "It's not what you find, it's what you fix," showing that mission impact should guide vulnerability priorities rather than compliance boxes. One insightful observation Salvia makes c...

In this episode of the Federal Tech Podcast, John Gilroy interviews Justin Fessler, Vice President of Public Sector at LogicMonitor, about the growing role of autonomous AI and observability in federal government IT operations. Fessler explains that autonomous AI is not about replacing people but about automating repetitive operational tasks, correlating complex system events, and helping IT teams...

Craig Bowman, Senior Vice President at Trellix, discussed Trellix's project to secure Ukraine's cyber environment against nation-state attacks, highlighting the rapid evolution of attack vectors from Ukraine to the U.S. He emphasized the importance of AI in cybersecurity, noting Trellix's use of AI to autonomously mitigate attacks, as seen during the 2025 cyber espionage campaign. Bowman also expl...

Today, we examine the strategy for filling technology roles in the federal government. Everyone reading this sentence knows that the federal government is competing with commercial organizations for tech talent. Combining that with an arduous federal hiring process, a reduced budget, and a drastic increase in cyberattacks heightens this concern. We sat down with Nav Singh, the Chief Marketing Offi...

John Gilroy and Josh Wilson, CEO of LMI, discussed the shift from traditional defense technology development cycles to rapid deployment, emphasizing the need for integrated hardware-software systems. For decades, the military would assemble detailed requirements, solicit bids, select a winner, and wait years for the contract to be completed. This approach can work with some hardware systems, but t...

Finding a needle in a haystack would seem like a minor endeavor compared to what today's federal systems managers must face. Let's take a stab at a correct farmyard analogy – the haystacks double in size every day and are moving. That sounds like an exaggeration, but recent reports show that nine million zero-day exploits are released every day. AI is putting malicious actors on steroids. Chris To...

John Gilroy hosts Dennis Woo, Director of Federal Sales at Kong, to discuss the rise of API management in federal security. API management has been a slowly growing concern for the past decade.  Cloud adoption has driven API adoption; now we see cheap storage and AI systems making many API connections. Voilà, API security is now a topic for federal security leaders. During the interview, Dennis Wo...

Today, we sat down with Snehal Attani from Horizon3.ai to discuss the impact of large language models (LLMs) like Mythos on federal cybersecurity. He makes a range of startling statements. First, he admits that AI tools like Mythos can find bugs in code. In fact, he claims that the effort to find it may drop to zero. He also warns of the potential for AI-generated exploits to overwhelm security op...

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn    https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Everyone seems to have an opinion on AI. Today, we interviewed Levi Gundert, the Chief Security and Intelligence Officer for Recorded Future. He thinks that AI gives federal leaders an opportunity to fight back. For example, one aspect of cybersecurity is velocity; the number of attacks has expanded exponentially. Gunde...

Ep. 322 Mattermost Secures Mission Critical Federal Collaboration Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn    https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www. Federaltechpodcast.com The federal government has an unbelievably wide network. We all know about the IRS citizen-facing websites. We log in from our homes, the server is in the cloud somewhere, and we file our taxes...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www. Federaltechpodcast.com Today we sit down with an HR company, Workday, to see if it can transfer the success it has had in the commercial world into helping federal agencies reach ambitious goals. Matthew Cornelius works for Workday, but he has spent mor than a decade working in a wider variety of federal agencies. The...

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn    https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www. Federaltechpodcast.com Two of the least well-known, but most important acronyms in federal technology are ITSM and ITOM. IT Service Management focuses on services and user experience, while IT Operations Management focuses on technical performance and monitoring. These two concepts...

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn    https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www. Federaltechpodcast.com Angel Smith, President of Global Public Sector at Virtru, discussed the challenges of data interoperability in federal agencies, emphasizing that trust and policy issues often hinder data sharing more than technology. It took several years, but the federal go...

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn    https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www. Federaltechpodcast.com There is a popular podcast in the Washington, D.C. area called "Feds at the Edge."  The title alone acknowledges the importance of edge devices for the sprawling federal government. Today, we sat down with Tommy Gardner from HP to discuss the challenges of se...

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn    https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www. Federaltechpodcast.com The Veterans Administration is a system with nine million enrolled veterans across 1,300 facilities. In a system like that, downtime is not an option. Today, we look at how a company successfully reduced documentation time, increasing adoption in one part of...

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn    https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www. Federaltechpodcast.com Interest in technology comes in waves. Back in 2022, managing the supply chain became number one on the list of priorities for federal technology leaders. Since then, we have seen a huge cycle of AI dominating the federal government's attention span. This shi...

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn    https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www. Federaltechpodcast.com Sending deceptive email has been around for decades. It has gone from a Nigerian prince asking for financial assistance to 10,000 people. Today, phishing isn't   'spray and pray' anymore—AI is creating hyper-personalized emails that look exactly like someone...

If you go to Google Trends and type in API threats, you get a classic hockey stick. This is probably caused by the proliferation of connectors to cloud solutions paired with the popularity of AI. Today, we sat down with Brian Dennis from Akamai to talk about the problem this can present to federal systems. He begins by telling the audience that API attacks have increased by over 1,200 percent, ref...

This is an interview at the Salesforce Agentforce World Tour in Washington, D.C., held on March 29, 2026, at the Washington Convention Center. Mia Jordan was the federal CIO twice and brings a unique view to the discussion of challenges and solutions around federal technology. She sat down with Federal Tech Podcast at the Salesforce Agentforce World Tour to give her thoughts on AI and innovation i...

Today, we sat down with Paul Tatum, Executive Vice President, Global Public Sector at Salesforce, to hear how Salesforce can help federal agencies reach ambitious goals with Agentic AI. By now, everyone has played around with AI, and possibly some agents. Viewed independently, they can dazzle. Unfortunately, the federal government expects action based on data. If you isolate Agentic AI, you can fa...

Today, we sat down with Charles Fiery from Excella to discuss the complexities of improving federal agency processes. He shared insights on the challenges of process discovery, change management, and data transformation. It is always difficult to assess a large enterprise, whether public or private, to determine how to improve complex processes. One approach is to look at duplicative systems; the...

In the 1990's, the World Wide Web was so popular that it was facetiously called the Worldwide Wait. Centralized servers handled a small workload but bogged down as volumes increased. As a result, Content Delivery Services sprang up to distribute the workload worldwide. By 2001, large news organizations could manage unpredictable increases in traffic. The past decade saw a drastic increase in traff...

In 2026, we are seeing an increase in cyberattacks targeting defense contractors and defense production. Today, we met with Tim Miller, Field CTO at Dataminr, who explained how the company is helping the federal government address this growing threat. Traditionally, cyber threats could be classified as "Zero Day."  Essentially, this meant an attack targeting a software or hardware vulnerability th...

Today, we sat down with Trey Ford from Bugcrowd to talk about ethical hacking. One of the most memorable phrases from ancient Rome is Quis custodiet custodes? (Who Watches the Watchman?). This ancient admonition has direct application to federal cybersecurity. We know federal agencies spend millions of dollars to protect data. How does one ensure the contracted companies are doing their jobs? Trad...