FedScoop Radio

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a greater need to analyze data from outside government agencies' purview to better inform decisions on how and when employees should return to offices — things like travel patterns, supply chains or health developments. In this podcast, experts discuss data management and analysis tools to help agency leaders mitigate health risks and supply chain weakness throughout...

As employees across government work from home, collaboration tools are increasingly critical to maintaining productivity. However, when enabling both productivity and efficiency, there are boundaries to how much you can really gain, and the boundaries are finite, says Smartsheet's Chris Aherne in this podcast. He cites a study from Deloitte showing that digital transformation is “a game of diminis...

As agencies at all levels of government look to offer citizens tailored experiences similar to what they get in the private sector, predictive analytics are becoming an increasingly important part of that interaction. In the private sector, consumers now expect a personalized experience in the first minutes or hours after interacting with an entity and public sector organizations should be no diff...

Open source solutions are becoming an increasingly important part of enterprise systems. And in many cases, they’re giving federal agencies a superior and more secure alternative to using proprietary applications. There are hundreds of thousands of open source projects out there today, and demand for enterprise open source solutions continues to grow, according to Alan Clark, who works in SUSE’s C...

Recent advances in microprocessor architecture and performance are giving federal agencies reasons to take a second look at upgrading their legacy infrastructure, rather than just moving their operations to the cloud. “One of the things that we think is really changing is [the need to] erase old technical debt … and drive digital transformation and security transformation,” says Heath Muchmore. To...

Doing business with the Department of Defense has never been easy. But it’s about to get more complicated for tens of thousands of defense contractors and suppliers who must now prove they can meet a complex set of cybersecurity requirements as part of the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program. CMMC is DoD’s latest attempt to stem the tide of intellectual property lo...

Department of Defense (DOD) agencies and their partners want to capitalize on the speed, scale and analytic power of the cloud to tackle artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads. However, elevated security requirements, timing and budgets tend to limit which projects can actually move to the cloud — or whether they get done at all. The good news is that milCloud 2.0 — operated in par...

The pandemic and subsequent shift to support remote workers has put renewed focus on the limitations of relying on virtual private networks — and why zero-trust access controls offer greater long-term security. “There are a lot of challenges around scaling VPNs. Agencies that have adopted zero trust earlier were able to get [their remote workforce] up and running quite simply,” says Jose Padin. Pa...

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the whole notion of going into a government office to interact with an agency came to a stand-still, forcing agency leaders to establish alternative solutions to quickly deliver services to constituents. Fortunately, the availability of open source solutions and a global community of developers have helped IT leaders implement fast and agile cloud solutions. Impleme...

When it comes to IT modernization, federal agencies commonly face three central challenges: integrating a myriad of systems, rationalizing applications and winning over each system owner to support agencywide infrastructure changes. Those challenges often come to a head when trying to cultivate an agile and secure DevSecOps process. One agency that has demonstrated surprising success in overcoming...

Zero-trust security architecture is changing the way IT leaders think about access to federal agency networks and resources. That includes how to meet the needs of employees and contractors for whom physical personal identity verification (PIV) credentials and Common Access Cards (CAC) have been the primary method for authenticating access to federal IT systems. The rapid surge in telework during...

Public officials across the nation have come under extraordinary pressures to keep up with the demands for public services. But they’ve also shown a remarkable ability to innovate in a hurry, says IBM's Jay Bellissimo. While much of that innovation was driven by necessity, “it illustrates the potential to transform government faster than many would have thought possible,” he says. “What we’ve hear...

A new generation of open source solutions for high-performance computing are helping federal agencies tackle complex data and modeling challenges, such as climate simulations and fraud detection, according to a leading open source software expert. High-performance computing (HPC) solutions, together with available cloud services, allow government agencies to not only generate high-resolution model...

Defense agencies looking for a faster way to acquire and utilize cloud services may be overlooking a unique cloud platform already at their fingertips. That platform — milCloud 2.0 — is a fit-for-purpose commercial cloud service designed to meet the unique mission critical requirements of the Defense Department and its mission partners – including the military services, Defense Information Systems...

The massive shift to telework in recent weeks has put enormous pressures on federal, state and local IT departments, given the scale and complexity involved in shifting operations. But there may be a silver lining, as IT leaders are in a stronger position to advocate for more modern and out-of-the-box solutions that can deliver services faster or more flexibly. Steve McMahon, Interim CIO at Splunk...

IT executives are increasingly recognizing the importance of open source software as a way to preserve their investment options, reduce vendor lock-in and build more agility into their systems. SUSE's Melissa Di Donato shares her perspective on how the open source movement is continuing to grow in importance to enterprise IT decision makers, as well as use cases for ways that government agencies c...

Zero-trust architecture is gaining widening attention from agency IT leaders and federal policy-makers alike. As agency network connections grow more complex, and the number of distributed applications and remote users continues to expand, CISOs see zero-trust strategies as a critical way forward to keep agency systems and users secure. IT veteran Jim Richberg shares practical steps agency leaders...

Chief information security officers are working diligently to ensure the productivity of temporarily homebound agency employees, while still adhering to the fundamentals of effective cybersecurity practices. Because employees are connecting working remotely, often with their own equipment, there is an increased risk of an employee exposing agency networks to a whole host of security risks. IT depa...

The current work environment is prioritizing cloud-enabled collaboration tools for agencies, but without the network tools and bandwidth needed, says IT expert. Sponsored by Fortinet. Guest: Jim Richberg, field CISO at Fortinet Look for more coverage of “Security Transformation in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Agencies accommodating a larger remote workforce need a more holistic view of their networks that looks across all security layers. Cybersecurity experts from Cisco discuss new tools that allow CIOs and CISOs to quickly establish an integrated threat intelligence environment across multiple domains. Sponsored by Cisco. Guests from Cisco: Peter Romness, Cybersecurity Principal for U.S. Public Secto...

As agencies scramble for a solution to keep serving constituents and delivering on their mission, IT leaders must address several key challenges at once – including endpoint security, encrypted data transmission and bandwidth capacity, says former federal cybersecurity official, Jim Richberg. What’s helping them keep up with an expanding set of cloud and other remote connectivity capabilities help...

An increase in remote workers offers adversaries more opportunities to exploit vulnerabilities, but DNS security tools can help agencies stem attacks at the edge, says security expert. Sponsored by Akamai Technologies. Guest: Patrick Sullivan, CTO for Security Strategy, Akamai Technologies Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

As more government employees work remotely, agency IT teams can rapidly secure access at scale with cloud-based identity authentication, says a cybersecurity veteran. Sponsored by Duo Security, now a part of Cisco. Guest: Sean Frazier, Advisory CISO, Duo Security Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

IT industry veteran Dave Young discusses ways agencies can modernize faster and more securely by updating their infrastructure. Sponsored by CenturyLink. Guest: Dave Young, Senior Vice President, Public Sector, CenturyLink Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Federal guidelines on implementing identity and access controls beyond traditional credential validation methods give agencies more flexibility to improve security as well as user experience. Those guidelines — part of the Federal Identity, Credential and Access Management (FICAM) policy — also help pave the path to modernizing how employees and citizens access government resources. Sponsored by F...