Building a DevSecOps Culture

Posted on by Rich Savage

As software becomes more sophisticated, it plays an increasingly important role in all aspects of government operations. However, given the complexity and intertwined nature of modern software, any vulnerability could have wide-ranging consequences, which makes security of vital importance. The federal government has taken notice. A number of recent policy directives address issues related to the software supply chain, and key agencies are leading a governmentwide effort to promote secure software development, including the Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust and the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. Learn how you can implement DevSecOps to support your journey to secure, innovative software in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

The Mindset Shift that Enables DevSecOps

“In an ideal world, technology and processes support team members’ ability to deliver on their particular talents. Before agencies implement DevSecOps methodologies, they should identify where their processes are getting bottlenecked and forcing people to either work around them or fundamentally change their behavior. Instead, we want to make it easy for employees to do the right thing. The goal is to enable people to focus on what they do best — regardless of where they operate in the stack or the tools they are using — so that agencies can build and deploy secure, modern apps.”

Read more insights from Alex Barbato, Public Sector Solutions Engineer at VMware.

How Generative AI Improves Software Security

“Generative AI tools are becoming increasingly prevalent, providing interactive experiences that captivate the public’s imagination. These tools are accessible to anyone, offering a unique opportunity to engage and explore the creative possibilities enabled by AI technology. The technology doesn’t just train a model to recognize patterns. It can create things that are easy to understand: images, text, even videos. Sometimes the results are hilariously wrong, but other times the results are quite impressive, such as clear, concise answers to complex questions. Generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) technology, such as ChatGPT, has opened the doors for everyone to be an evaluator because the output is accessible and easy to critique.”

Read more insights from Robert Larkin, Senior Solutions Architect at Veracode.

Open Source is at the Heart of Software Innovation

“Embedding security into applications from the start is essential for streamlining and strengthening the entire development life cycle. Securing the software supply chain is a related effort that is of vast importance to government operations. Beyond securing individual applications, the ultimate goal is to build security into the pipeline itself. At each step and every handoff, we must be able to verify who has touched the software and who did what to ensure that the end result is what we intended to build and that nothing malicious has been injected along the way.”

Read more insights from Chris Mays, Staff Specialist Solutions Architect at Red Hat.

DevSecOps Needs Tool Diversity and Collaboration

“As DevSecOps methodologies and software factories grow in prevalence, agencies are recognizing that software development is a team sport — inside the agency, across departments and with external stakeholders. It touches many different teams, but getting everyone on the same page with tooling can be difficult. Different teams prefer different tools, and that makes collaboration hard. Modern software development brings security practices forward in the timeline while reducing duplication of efforts and improving real-time accountability. Success hinges on removing blockers, creating visibility and making sure collaboration is happening at every stage. In addition, encouraging input from different areas of the organization from the beginning and throughout development is vital for innovation.”

Read more insights from Ben Straub, Head of Public Sector at Atlassian.

Observability Speeds Zero Trust and Application Security

“In response to increasing cyberthreats, the government is speeding up the move to zero trust. This security model assumes that every user, request, application and non-human entity is not to be trusted until its identity can be verified. Zero trust principles require a layered defense that is more effective when rooted in observability. To develop an architecture that validates and revalidates every entity on the network, it is necessary to know what those entities are, how they’re communicating and how they typically behave so we can recognize deviations. Zero trust and observability technologies work together to create a more secure and resilient network environment by assuming that all requests for access are untrusted and continuously monitoring the network to detect and respond to potential threats.”

Read more insights from Willie Hicks, Public Sector Chief Technologist at Dynatrace.

The Role of a Service Mesh in Zero Trust Success

“For large companies and government agencies, it’s safe to assume that a committed attacker is already inside their networks. Executive Order 14028 mandates that every federal agency develop a Zero Trust architecture because it is the most effective approach to mitigating what attackers can do once they’ve made their way inside. What does Zero Trust look like at runtime? One of the key considerations is identity-based segmentation, which involves conducting five policy checks for every request in the system: encrypted connection between service endpoints, service authentication, service-to-service authorization, end user authentication, and end user-to-resource authorization.”

Read more insights from Zack Butcher, Founding Engineer at Tetrate and co-author of the NIST SP 800-200 series and SP 800-207A.

AI and the Journey to Secure Software Development

“By automating and optimizing DevSecOps workflows, we can still shift security left while relieving developers from the burden of some complex remediation. It begins with a workflow that leverages fully automated security scanning to rapidly identify vulnerabilities as well as providing suggested remediation for vulnerabilities and on-demand remediation training to educate developers on what they are getting into. The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence is making new advances possible. The opportunities go well beyond AI-assisted code creation. AI features are being expanded across the entire software development life cycle. When it comes to security, having AI assist by making code functionality clear or explaining a vulnerability in detail reduces the time required to remediate risk.”

Read more insights from Joel Krooswyk, Federal CTO at GitLab.

Scaling App Development While Meeting Security Standards

“The dream for any software development team is constant, stable releases. The faster teams get the work they’ve created into production, the faster the agency can derive value from that work. When app development is stymied by cumbersome security reviews and stability testing and by the need to wait for a deployment window, innovation is stifled and the return on investment is delayed. If agencies want to have efficient, value-driving software development teams, those teams must be able to move with agility. A trustworthy, scalable DevOps pipeline that brings together testing and security in a seamless way allows teams to push out new apps and improvements quickly so government employees and citizens can have a seamless digital experience and the most up-to-date tools and information.”

Read more insights from Kyle Tobener, Head of Security and IT at Copado.

Join us in-person for our must-attend DevSecOps Conference—an exciting day of exhibits, speaking sessions, and networking events. We look forward to showcasing new DevSecOps updates from our supporting panels featuring government, systems integrators, and industry thought leaders.

Download the full Innovation in Government® report for more insights from DevSecOps thought leaders and additional industry research from FCW.

Ransomware Protection for Kubernetes Data in the Public Sector

Posted on by Gaurav Rishi

Kubernetes is a powerful platform for deploying and managing containerized applications in the cloud. It offers many benefits such as scalability, portability, resilience and automation. However, Kubernetes also poses some challenges when it comes to data protection and security, especially in the public sector where sensitive data and compliance regulations are involved. That’s why we are excited to continue our strategic partnership with Carahsoft Technology Corp., the leading government IT solutions provider, to deliver Kasten K10 by Veeam, the market-leading Kubernetes data protection solution, to public sector customers across the U.S.

In this blog post, we will explore some of the common issues that public sector organizations face when using Kubernetes, and how Kasten K10 by Veeam can help them overcome these challenges with a simple, secure and scalable solution for Kubernetes data protection.

The challenges of Kubernetes Data Protection in the Public Sector

One of the main challenges of Kubernetes data protection in the public sector is the complexity and diversity of the Kubernetes environment. Kubernetes clusters can span multiple clouds, regions and zones, and contain hundreds or thousands of applications and microservices. Each application may have its own data sources, dependencies and configurations, which need to be backed up and restored consistently and reliably.

Veeam Ransomware Protection Blog Embedded Image 2023

Another challenge is the security and compliance of the Kubernetes data. Public sector organizations often deal with sensitive data such as personal information, health records, financial transactions or national security secrets. These data need to be protected from unauthorized access, modification or deletion, as well as from external threats such as ransomware attacks. Moreover, public sector organizations need to comply with various regulations and operate in secure environments, which requires cluster deployments in compliant hybrid environments spanning examples like AWS GovCloud and Red Hat OpenShift.

A third challenge is the scalability and performance of the Kubernetes data protection solution. As Kubernetes clusters grow in size and complexity, so does the amount of data that needs to be backed up and restored. Public sector organizations need a solution that can handle large volumes of data without compromising the availability or performance of the Kubernetes applications. They also need a solution that can scale up or down as needed, without requiring manual intervention or complex configuration changes.

The Solution: Kasten K10 by Veeam

Kasten K10 by Veeam is a purpose-built solution for Kubernetes data protection that addresses all these challenges and more. Kasten K10 is designed to simplify and automate the backup and recovery of Kubernetes applications and their data across any environment. It offers the following features and benefits for public sector organizations:

Application-centric approach: Kasten K10 treats each Kubernetes application as a unit of backup and recovery, rather than individual containers or volumes. This ensures that the application state and dependencies are preserved across backups and restores, regardless of where they are running or how they are configured.
Policy-driven automation: Kasten K10 allows public sector organizations to define backup policies based on application metadata such as labels, annotations, namespaces or clusters. These policies can specify the frequency, retention, location, encryption and compression of the backups, as well as any custom actions or hooks that need to be executed before or after the backup. Kasten K10 then automatically applies these policies to the matching applications, eliminating the need for manual backups or scripts.
Secure and compliant data protection: Kasten K10 encrypts all backup data at rest and in transit using AES-256 encryption keys that are stored in a secure key management system. Kasten K10 also supports role-based access control (RBAC) and audit logging to ensure that only authorized users can access or modify the backup data. Additionally, Kasten K10 provides ransomware protection by creating immutable backups that cannot be overwritten or deleted by malicious actors.
Scalable and performant architecture: Kasten K10 leverages a distributed architecture that scales with the Kubernetes cluster. It uses parallelism and deduplication to optimize the backup, restore performance and reduce the storage footprint. It also supports incremental backups and restores to minimize the network bandwidth and application downtime.
Application portability: Kasten K10 enables public sector organizations to ensure application portability across diverse Kubernetes environments by using Transform Sets. Transform Sets are a set of rules that can modify the application configuration during backup or restore, such as changing namespaces, labels, annotations, storage classes, or secrets. This allows public sector organizations to migrate their applications from one cluster to another, or from one cloud to another, without breaking their functionality or security.

Next Steps

We hope this blog post provided valuable insights into how Kasten K10 by Veeam can help you protect your Kubernetes data in the public sector. If you want to learn more, here are some next steps you can take:

Watch this video to see Kasten K10 in action and learn how it can simplify and automate your Kubernetes data protection workflows: https://youtu.be/gu3J6ZeWwK8

Try the full-featured and FREE edition of Kasten K10 today with this super-quick installation in less than 10 minutes: https://www.kasten.io/free-kubernetes

Don’t miss this opportunity to take your Kubernetes data protection to the next level with Kasten K10 by Veeam and Carahsoft. We look forward to hearing from you soon! Download our full Gorilla Guide to Securing Cloud Native Applications on Kubernetes.

Empowering Public Sector Technical Teams With Generative AI in a Secure Collaboration Platform

Posted on by Ian Tien

Recent advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) – with its seemingly limitless potential use cases – have captured the public imagination. And they’re just as compelling to government agencies and the military. Organizations across the public and private sectors are racing to identify the most effective applications of the technology and to implement robust and secure solutions enabled by generative AI.

For instance, generative AI can be a powerful assistant to technical and operational teams such as those involved in application development and incident response. The technology can help teams gain real-time insights, bring to light solutions to unexpected problems, and help make fast, data-driven decisions.

It’s with those advantages in mind that Mattermost partnered with Ask Sage to integrate the Ask Sage GPT solution with the Mattermost secure collaboration platform. The result is secure, AI-enhanced collaboration for technical teams in the U.S. public sector.

Real-time Insights, Natural-language Format

Mattermost is a secure, workflow-centric collaboration platform for technical and operational teams that need to meet nation-state-level security and trust requirements. Available self-hosted or in the cloud, Mattermost integrates team messaging, audio and screen share, technical tools, workflow automation, and project management in an open-source solution.

Mattermost Generative AI Blog Embedded Image 2023

Ask Sage is a GPT-powered platform provider that specializes in enabling secure access to Generative AI capabilities for both government and commercial teams. With a wide range of use cases, including summarization, coding, code review, code improvement, RFP writing, responding and evaluation, and report writing, Ask Sage is built on cutting-edge AI technologies such as Azure OpenAI GPT, Cohere, Google Bard, and various open-source LLMs. The solution can ingest custom datasets, tap into APIs, and connect to data lakes for real-time data and insights in a natural-language format.

Ask Sage can quickly and automatically process large amounts of structured and unstructured data – including government-related data such as laws, Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), DoD Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), and DoD policy and governance content. Outputs include summaries, translations, sentiment analysis, deep insights, and coding.

Integration of Ask Sage with Mattermost provides technical teams with secure, real-time access to generative AI to enhance collaboration, operational productivity, and decision quality. Government and contractor teams can now securely leverage the power of OpenAI and collaborate within a single, seamless interface.

Real-time Insights, Natural-language Format

With this strategic integration, Mattermost equips technical teams to leverage generative AI to accelerate processes, increase output, and improve outcomes. It’s ideal for government teams that write code, manage RFPs, analyze large data sets, or develop and translate intelligence reports.

Ask Sage offers rapid data analysis and summarization to help teams gain new insights as circumstances evolve. Team members spend less time and effort on manual research and analysis, giving them more time to focus on higher-priority decision-making and strategic tasks.

Users can improve the accuracy and depth of Ask Sage results by uploading relevant data –which is labeled by classification level, encrypted, and separated from the OpenAI models. Once uploaded, the data can be accessed only by authorized users through granular access controls within Mattermost.

Collaboration Purpose-built for Public Sector

Mattermost is well-suited to technical public sector teams, because it’s available as an on-prem, self-hosted deployment. That means teams can collaborate securely with lower risk of compromise. It’s also an open-source solution, so organizations can tailor security settings to protect information at impact levels up to IL6 for DoD Secret data. That’s protection that general-purpose, cloud-based productivity and instant-message tools can’t match.

The platform allows teams to create as many topic- or project-specific communication channels as they need. These channels allow users to centralize conversations, data, and tools – including Ask Sage – in the right context. That keeps team members focused and productive, without the need to continually context-switch.

Another useful Mattermost feature is built-in, customizable playbooks – essentially digital checklists – that help team members consistently take the right actions at the right times. Mattermost playbooks can now include generative AI to further automate and accelerate project workflows and incident response.

Leveraging Mattermost’s secure collaboration platform combined with Ask Sage’s generative AI capabilities can revolutionize the way government teams work together, manage technical projects, and respond to mission-critical situations. As interest in OpenAI GPT and similar platforms grows, this strategic integration is a gamechanger in enabling U.S. government and military organizations to securely benefit from generative AI.

Speak with a member of our team today and learn more about Mattermost at www.mattermost.com.

Returning to the Heart of Customer Experience: A Government for the People

Posted on by Tiffany Goddard

At Carahsoft’s annual Government Customer Experience and Engagement Summit hosted in June, experts from industry and Federal, State, and Local Government came together to discuss stewardship, innovation and paths forward in customer experience (CX). At the one-day event, the thought-provoking sessions examined trends regarding two main themes in the CX journey: culture and technology. The culture track explored ideas for effective leadership, understanding and supporting employees and the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion. The technology track considered goals within IT modernization, artificial intelligence and automation and the digitization of services. This blog series highlights lessons learned from the 2023 Summit and unpacks strategies for achieving excellence in Government CX and engagement.

The Big Picture of Customer Experience

During the opening keynote session, President of GovExec360, Troy Schneider, held a discussion with Barbara Morton, Deputy Chief Veterans Experience Officer, Veterans Experience Office (VEO) at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), emphasizing the importance of accessibility and accountability in service delivery. Morton said that purpose is at the heart of customer experiences. Whether they are in the government or supporting from the outside, public servants must consider the barriers along with the opportunities that foster trust, serve the greater common purpose and create excellence in CX. In the Public Sector, CX establishes how constituents engage with civic services. By transforming CX, the public sector can build and progress toward greater trust with those it serves.

Great CX starts with an organizational understanding that building and sustaining trust matters. With that agreement in mind, organizations can better support the mission of delivering efficient CX by learning and adapting to the needs of people they are serving. Agencies should provide visibility to customers on the timeliness and process of their requests, as well as deliver on their promises to foster trust and assurance of reliability. Using human-centered design throughout all stages of CX is also essential for understanding the human perspective and anticipating customer needs. As data is collected throughout the human-centric design approach, organizations gain actionable insights that help them create the best tangible solutions for customer challenges.

Use Case: The Department of Veterans Affairs

Government agencies and organizations must focus on traditional operational measures, and the VA ensures it takes another step forward to evaluate experience-based metrics and treat these insights as co-equal when it comes to agency performance. Morton said that action drivers like executive orders and Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) efforts are significant authorities in the transformation of Government CX to continuously progress toward access equitability and efficiency. With their guidance, agencies must agree on the top priorities for service delivery and then incorporate the human-centered design aspect. For example, the VA examines women and tribal veteran’s experiences to ensure it can translate those insights into meaningful and applicable products so those groups feel better understood when interacting with the VA. Additionally, in a digitally driven world, organizations must provide experiences with easy-to-navigate accessibility. Each agency should have a clear homepage or “digital front door” that customers know how and when to access.

Lasting Progress for Lasting Change

In the government, CX can make a measurable difference in the lives of individuals or families going through significant life changes, such as a natural disaster or medical crises as an active or retired veteran. Open source technology that intersects with the government at Federal, State and Local levels can achieve economies of scope and scale, and the improvement of financial savings proportionate to goods produced. The addition of effective CX technology allows government agencies to provide more assistance to more people, having a profound impact in their lives.

Check back soon to read the rest of Carahsoft’s insights from CX industry thought leaders at the summit.

To learn more about the latest in the CX landscape and how Carahsoft’s industry-leading partners can support your Customer Experience initiatives, please visit our resource hub to access all on-demand recordings and information from the 2023 Government Customer Experience and Engagement Summit.

Partnerships for Public Sector Solutions

Posted on by Mike McCalip

Systems integrators have evolved to simplify and streamline the process of deploying complex solutions to complex agency challenges. SIs have years of experience working with agencies on the kinds of systems that have many moving parts. Therefore, they have a clear understanding of agency missions and know how to navigate the government’s procurement process. However, SIs don’t work alone. They thrive by partnering with companies that have transformative new approaches for addressing the government’s needs, such as providing innovative digital services, supporting a hybrid workforce and protecting government networks from cyberthreats. In a recent report, research firm Quadintel states that the global systems integration market was valued at $327 billion in 2021 “and is anticipated to grow with a healthy growth rate of more than 13% over the forecast period 2022-2028.” SIs are well-suited to helping agencies make that shift in thinking. Learn how Sis can help your agency thrive by partnering with innovative companies in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

The Power of Embracing a Partner Mindset

“Success for integrators and their partners is delivering secure solutions that provide meaningful and impactful mission outcomes. Leidos invests heavily in testing and building relevant solutions for public-sector customers to ensure that innovative technologies are cost-effective, resilient, compliant with government requirements and best positioned to solve mission problems. Investing in a continuous innovation cycle is critical. Leidos and Red Hat recognize that we are in the business of continuous modernization. When Red Hat and other key partners offer innovative new solutions, our partnerships enable us to move fast in testing and proving that the technology works and can scale to meet the government’s needs. Leidos leverages innovative technology to drive great mission outcomes in our Aviation Security Product business unit (Security Enterprise Solutions). By using cloud-native AI/ML modeling solutions, Leidos had been able to achieve significant performance gains in our process for developing algorithms for security detection products, ultimately improving travelers’ experiences at airports.”

Read more insights from Peter O’Donoghue, CTO of the Civil Group at Leidos, and Adam Clater, chief architect of the North America Public Sector at Red Hat.

A Collaboration That Far Exceeds the Sum of its Parts

“In 2020 KMPG and ServiceNow recognized that a large and newly formed Defense Department agency was facing a number of challenges in its efforts to transform its business, consolidate systems and processes, and modernize its technology. We began having conversations with the executive leadership and department heads across different lines of business to gain a clear understanding of their mission, current challenges and desired outcomes. As the ServiceNow program was being established at the agency, the customer required a robust governance and platform team to ensure utilization of development best practices and policy generation, platform management activities (e.g., upgrades) and a secure, scalable, federated development model. This technical rigor and governance structure supported the creation of a stable environment in which application development teams could configure and deploy new, unique applications rapidly.”

Read more insights from Kyle McKendrick, senior enterprise account executive at ServiceNow, and Daniel Gruber specialist managing director at KPMG.

Driving Modernization with Deep Strategic Partnerships

“In response to the challenges agencies face, Leidos has been focused on building deep strategic partnerships that help us create at-scale solutions for our government customers. These partnerships are characterized by a commitment to open lines of communication and transparency in terms of strategy and investments. We also operate in what we describe as a badgeless environment in which experts from different companies work side-by-side to engineer new capabilities and solutions.”

Read more insights from Derrick Pledger, senior vice president and CIO at Leidos.

Why Success in Zero Trust Requires a Team Effort

“Zero trust focuses on the connection between users and the data, applications, networks and systems they want to access. In zero trust architectures, new administrative tools continually evaluate whether allowing an individual user to have a certain level of access privileges is the right thing to do. The approach gives agencies much more flexibility as they modernize because they can make decisions at a granular level that enable them to secure data and entire IT ecosystems.”

Read more insights from Meghan Good, vice president and director of the Cyber Accelerator at Leidos.

How Multi-Domain Operations Accelerate Modernization

“By design, multi-domain operations must involve a broad range of partners to achieve the desired mission outcomes, particularly as threats continue to rapidly evolve. Making such a shift allows military and civilian agencies to far more rapidly add new capabilities to individual systems. The approach also enhances agencies’ ability to partner with industry to harness the power of cross-domain, cross-agency and even cross-company digital synergies.”

Read more insights from Chad Haferbier, vice president of multi-domain operations solutions at Leidos.

Balancing Speed and Security with SecDevOps

“As one of the largest systems integrators, Leidos understands the government’s mission domain and individual agencies’ unique challenges. We also know where they are in their evolution. Some are still easing toward agile and SecDevOps, whereas others have fully embraced those approaches. Our partners in the commercial world are some of the fastest, most forward-leaning technologists.”

Read more insights from Paul Burnette, vice president and director of the Software Accelerator at Leidos.

Download the full Innovation in Government® report for more insights from SI cloud thought leaders and additional industry research from FCW.

Higher Education All-In on Cloud-First

Posted on by Tim Boltz

Is digital transformation in higher education possible without the cloud? Not likely. When that transformation is viewed as a journey, not a destination, the essential role of cloud-based resources as enabling and empowering infrastructure comes sharply into focus. Institutional performance, operational efficiencies, student success — the primary goals of digital transformation in higher education today — are only possible with the agility and scalability of cloud-based computing and resources.

Without a clear strategy in place, digital transformation and cloud migration can start to look like a game of whack-a-mole. As teams weigh where cloud solutions will take them next, understanding and articulating the need to include data-intensive computing, security, reporting, and analysis is imperative. That’s all the more true as students increasingly demand a level of personalization and engagement that can only be delivered through a robust analytics and data infrastructure. Download the guide to learn how to grow beyond today’s analytics programs and to mature them for endemic management and strategy.

Cloud Budgets Keep Growing

“‘As higher education institutions continue to pivot toward continuous modernization practices, the SaaS segment of the cloud is likely to see the most investment,’ noted Damien Eversmann, Chief Architect for Education at Red Hat. ‘Cloud resources provide the agility and flexibility needed to support the culture of change that continuous modernization demands. As long as security practices are properly maintained, cloud adoption is one of the best tools for academic institutions to stay ahead of the curve.’ All cloud categories are expected to see growth in 2023, according to Gartner, with the most significant anticipated growth in Cloud Management and Security Services and Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS).”

Read more insights from Damien Eversmann, Chief Architect for Education at Red Hat.

Accelerate Agility and Integrate Data

“Today, higher education IT professionals refer to “the new normal” when discussing the many modes of learning, research, and other day-to-day hybrid work now possible thanks to cloud computing. The monumental movement and general acceptance of the cloud within higher education happened nearly overnight, after years of hesitance and reluctance on the part of higher ed leaders who sought greater on-site control over data and operations. That reluctance transformed to trust as cloud-based operations proved their mettle, and institutions by and large today embrace a new way of working through the ongoing and continuous change of digital transformation. “That’s probably the biggest change — that change is the constant,” said Bill Greeves, an industry advisor for SAP who supports the organization’s education customers. As a former CIO and deputy county manager for Wake County, N.C., Greeves saw firsthand the overnight transformation to cloud-based workloads to keep government and citizen services up and running at the onset and throughout the pandemic.”

Read more insights from Bill Greeves, Industry Advisor for SAP.

Essentials for Navigating Cloud Implementations

“While the mission of higher education has never changed, the means of fulfilling that mission continue to swiftly evolve, particularly as a result of cloud computing technology and the migration of workloads, applications, storage — pretty much everything — to the cloud. Higher education research, in particular, enjoys many benefits from the cloud, including rapid provisioning of data and applications, or abstraction, which ensures non-technical users can readily deploy cloud resources and quickly get back to the real task at hand: research. Cloud is at the heart of institutions’ ongoing march to digital transformation, but that’s not all: Prompted by the pandemic, many colleges and universities have also embraced the rapid adoption of cloud capabilities in support of remote work and collaboration.”

Read more insights from Hunter Ely, Security Strategist at Palo Alto Networks, and Mathew Lamb, Manager, Pre-Sales Cloud Native Solutions at Palo Alto Networks.

Download the full report for more insights from these from these higher ed Cloud leaders as well as additional perspectives and industry research.

The Open Source Revolution in Government

Posted on by Natalie Gregory

Open source technology accounts for a significant portion of most modern applications, with some estimates going as high as 90%, and it is the foundation of many mainstream technologies. Its strength lies in the fact that a vibrant ecosystem of developers contribute to and continually improve the underlying code, which keeps the software dynamic and responsive to changing needs. Enterprise open source software further augments these community-driven projects by providing enterprise-grade support and scalability, while retaining the innovation and flexibility driven by the open source development model. By providing the best of both worlds, such solutions represent a powerful arsenal of tools for addressing government’s most pressing challenges. In a recent pulse survey of FCW readers, 93% of respondents said they were using open source technology. And more than half of respondents to FCW’s survey see open source as an integral resource for strengthening cybersecurity. That number reflects a positive trend toward a better understanding of open source software’s intrinsic approach to security. The power of enterprise open source technologies lies in a combination of collaboration, transparency and industry expertise. As agencies expand their use of such technologies, they maximize their ability to achieve mission success in the most secure, agile and innovative way possible. Learn how the combined power of community-driven innovation and industry-leading technical support is expanding the government’s capacity for transformation in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

Why Open Source is a Mission-Critical Foundation

“Open source transforms the way agencies manage hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The most critical technology in the cloud, across all providers, is Linux. Everything is built on top of that foundation — both the infrastructure of the cloud and cloud offerings. Given the right partner, the promise of Linux is that it provides a consistent technology layer for agencies across all footprints, including multiple cloud providers, on-premises data centers and edge environments. From that foundation, agencies and their partners can build portable architectures that leverage other open source technologies. Portability gives organizations the ability to use the same architectures, underlying technologies, monitoring and security solutions, and human skills to manage mission-critical capabilities across all footprints.”

Read more insights from Christopher Smith, Vice President and General Manager of the North America Public Sector at Red Hat.

How Open Source is Expanding its Mission Reach

“The real power of open source technologies was revealed when they cracked the code on being highly powered, mission-specific, distributed systems. That’s how we are able to get insights out of data by being able to hold it and query it. Today, open source innovation is being accelerated by the cloud, and the conversation is still changing, with people now demanding that their open source companies be cloud-first platforms. Along the way, the open source technologies that start in the community and then receive a boost of commercial innovation have matured. The most powerful ones are expanding their ability to address more of the government’s mission needs. They are staying interoperable and keeping the data interchange non-proprietary, which is important for government agencies.”

Read more insights from David Erickson, Senior Director of Solutions Architecture at Elastic.

The Open Source Community’s Commitment to Security

“A central tenet of software development is visibility and traceability from start to finish so that a developer can follow the code through development, testing, building and security compliance, and then into the final production environment. Along the way, there are some key activities that boost collaboration and positive outcomes, starting with early code previews, where developers can spin up an application for stakeholders to review. Other activities include documented code reviews by peers to ensure the code is well written and efficient. In addition, DevOps components such as open source, infrastructure as code, Kubernetes as a deployment mechanism, automated testing, and better platforms and capabilities have helped developers move away from building ecosystems and instead focus on innovation.”

Read more insights from Joel Krooswyk, Federal CTO at GitLab.

The Limitless Potential of an Open Source Database

“One of the most important elements of any database migration is ensuring that proper planning and due diligence have been performed to ensure a smooth and successful deployment. In addition, there are some key considerations agencies should keep in mind when moving to open source databases. It is essential to start with a clear understanding of the business case and objectives for adopting an open source approach. Agencies also need to decide how the database should function and what it should do to support their digital transformation. Then they must choose the optimal method to deploy the database.”

Read more insights from Jeremy A. Wilson, CTO of the North America Public Sector at EDB.

Modernizing Digital Services with Open Source

“A composable, open source digital experience platform (DXP) enables agencies to overcome those challenges. Open source technology is continuously contributed to by a community of developers to reflect a wide array of needs across organizations in varying industries and of varying sizes. A composable approach allows agencies to assemble a number of solutions for a fast, efficient system that is tailored to their needs. When agencies combine a composable DXP with open source technology, they have access to best-of-breed software and the ability to customize the assembly to suit their requirements. An enterprise DXP will enable agencies to achieve a 360-degree view of how constituents are engaging with their digital services and gain valuable data to understand how to enhance their experience. Finally, a composable, open source DXP provides a proactive approach to protecting against security and compliance vulnerabilities.”

Read more insights from Tami Pearlstein, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Acquia.

Creating Secure Open Source Repositories

“Protecting the software supply chain requires looking at every single thing that might come into an agency’s environment. To understand that level of visibility, I like to use the analogy of a refrigerator. All the ingredients necessary to make a cake or pie are in the refrigerator. We know they are of good quality, and other teams can use them instead of having to find their own. At Sonatype, our software equivalent of a refrigerator is the Nexus Repository Manager. A second aspect of our offering, called Lifecycle, allows us to evaluate the open source components in repositories at every stage of the software development life cycle. One piece of software can download a thousand other components. How do we know if one of those components is malicious?”

Read more insights from Maury Cupitt, Regional Vice President of Sales Engineering at Sonatype.

Better Data Flows for a Better Customer Experience

“A more responsive and personalized customer experience isn’t much different from the initial problem set that gave birth to Apache Kafka. When people interact with agencies, they want those agencies to know who they are and how they’ve interacted in the past. They don’t want to be asked for their Social Security number three times on the same phone call. They also expect that the information or service they receive will be the same whether they are accessing it over the phone, via a mobile app and on a website. To elevate the quality of their service, agencies must be able to stream information in a low-friction way so different systems are consistent with one another and up-to-date at all times, regardless of the communication channel an individual uses. President Joe Biden’s executive order about transforming the federal customer experience is based on this capability. The most successful companies across industries have figured out how to do it, and for the most part, they’ve done it with open source software.”

Read more insights from Jason Schick, General Manager of Confluent US Public Sector.

An Open Source Approach to Data Analytics

“For the past 40 years, agencies have used data warehouses to collect and analyze their data. Although those warehouses worked well, they were limited in what they could do. For instance, they could only handle structured data, but by some estimates, 90% of agencies’ data is unstructured and in the form of text, images, audio, video and the like. Furthermore, proprietary data warehouses can show agencies what has happened in the past but can’t predict what might happen in the future. To achieve the government’s goal of evidence-based decision-making, agencies need to be able to tap into all their data and predict what might come next.”

Read more insights from Howard Levenson, Regional Vice President at Databricks.

Download the full Innovation in Government® report for more insights from these open source thought leaders and additional industry research from FCW.

Nutanix and Red Hat Partnership Brings Customers Best-in-Class Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Complete Stack

Posted on by Lance Abla and Brad Bignall

Nutanix and Red Hat have partnered to deliver a hybrid cloud experience, offering their industry-leading technologies, such as Nutanix’s Cloud Platform now certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. This partnership provides customers with a complete technology stack for those looking to modernize, build, scale and manage virtual and cloud native applications on-premise and in the public cloud. Red Hat OpenShift is the preferred enterprise full stack Kubernetes Solution on the Nutanix Cloud Platform leveraging the Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV), combining the knowledge of the premier provider of open source solutions and the industry leading HCI Cloud Platform. Both current and new customers can take advantage of this partnership to support even their most demanding workloads and challenges.

“We have a vision to enable open hybrid clouds, where customers have choice and flexibility,” Paul Cormier, President and CEO of Red Hat, said. “Our partnership with Nutanix brings a leading hyperconverged offering to the open hybrid cloud, driving greater choice for our joint customers in how they deploy their containerized workloads and backed by a joint support experience.”

Public Sector Challenges

Government agencies are facing several challenges that the Nutanix and Red Hat solution addresses:

Heightened cybersecurity threats and overall security posture: No matter the infrastructure, whether on-premise or in the cloud, agencies need their data to be fully secure. With attacks and cybersecurity risks growing daily, agencies are looking for solutions that provide enhanced protection from the start.

Getting Artificial Intelligence at the edge in a simplistic, deployable format: Today, agencies want easy ways within both AI hardware and software that they can run out hundreds of nodes in the field, and a solution that will make AI and Machine Learning workloads scalable, reliable and durable.

Application and operations modernization efforts: Many agencies are on the road to modernization for their applications and need solutions that can keep up. They would benefit from a single platform on which to apply best practices across the entire universe of applications—from traditional to microservice and containerized applications. Leveraging this partnership and the combined development and engineering efforts can streamline that modernization process.

The Nutanix and Red Hat partnership not only enables its customers to overcome these challenges through their collaborative solutions, but gives them the tools to manage interoperability, maintain flexibility and scalability, and ultimately support their customer’s goals.

Support Through the Cloud Journey

Perhaps the most imperative element of this alliance is that it will not simply step in for a few tests and software deployment, but instead, become an integrated solution and resource for long-term assistance to ensure value for its customers. Focusing on co-development and selling in the field, this partnership supports efforts to drive the innovation and richness of a full stack offering and open source landscape with storage, automation and database capabilities through platforms like OpenShift, Ansible, and Nutanix Era.

Several key foundational operations of the alliance include:

Red Hat OpenShift as the preferred choice for enterprise full stack Kubernetes on the Nutanix Cloud Platform
Nutanix Cloud Platform as the preferred choice for HCI for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift
Nutanix AHV is now a Red Hat certified hypervisor enabling full support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift on the Nutanix Cloud Platform
Joint engineering roadmap providing robust and unique interoperability
More seamless support experience providing faster resolution times for joint customers

With this partnership, customers can take advantage of an unparalleled infrastructure and subscription service. With no major upgrade costs or perpetual licensing, users receive all new releases of technology and can upgrade once ready to make the transition. Moreover, all deployment options can be leveraged via the same subscription licensing, and integrated automation through this partnership makes this operation even simpler. By utilizing Red Hat Ansible, OpenShift and Kubernetes Operators on the Nutanix Cloud Platform, DevOps Teams can implement declarative infrastructure as code, allowing for streamlined deployment, and an extended reach from on-prem datacenters to the public cloud.

From the beginning, Nutanix and Red Hat have not only been collaborating to maximize their partnership, but also are constantly considering what could be the next best move. Now nearly nine months into this alliance, these vendors are moving past major foundational efforts and are filling in the gaps of automation and orchestration to make their partnership even more accessible and flexible for their customers.

Contact us today to learn more about our new hybrid cloud partnership with Red Hat!

Gaining Insight: Data Use for Campus Success

Posted on by Tim Boltz

A Campus Technology survey among readers found that while almost every college and university considered the use of data critical to institutional survival (84%), a minority of respondents believe their schools are very mature in applying data for practical uses. For example, while half of colleges (50%) have identified indicators of student success and use them regularly for decision-making, less than a third report that users can quickly and easily get the information they need (28%); have robust, secure or user-friendly tools for supporting data collection (29%); or have data experts available to guide users through their data needs (28%). In spite of the decades-long emphasis on adopting data to make better decisions, few institutions have exhibited progress towards their goals. What schools need is to have a better grasp of user experiences, which takes many forms. The practice of “data diving” on campus can have a lot of amazing outcomes. More students will show up and stick around; users’ experiences will be memorable in positive ways; employees will feel more job satisfaction, giving them pause when other opportunities arise; and innovation won’t be rushed by external forces (a.k.a. COVID-19) but introduced regularly as the normal order of operations, in response to what data is telling you. Learn how your institution can address these issues in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Education report.

The Absolutely Essential Higher Ed Superpower

“Never has education been more reliant on technology and the IT organization. As a result, colleges and universities are much more at risk from cybersecurity vulnerabilities today than ever before. At the same time, as technology dependence has grown, staffing and budget haven’t, which means IT solutions for educational institutions truly need to do more with the same or, in some cases, less than they’ve historically had. The pressure is immense. If a student can’t access an application or a resource, if a faculty member can’t get onto web conferencing, if a staffer can’t send e-mail, the institution will fail in its missions: educating students, making research discoveries, and doing everything in its power to secure the future of the world. With so much at stake, the one superpower IT teams in the education sector need to develop above all others is X-ray vision. Gaining visibility into what goes on inside your systems lets you become proactive, allowing you to see exactly where to target your time and attention and quickly troubleshoot problems for speedier response. Unless you were born on Krypton, the best way to achieve this level of visibility is to capitalize on tools that deliver the same capabilities.”

Read more insights from SolarWinds’ Group Vice President of Product Management, Brandon Shopp.

Why the Student Experience Matters (and What You Can Do About It)

“If a project is served by a point product, a program needs a platform. And I consider a platform to manage the student experience to be as vital to the higher ed technology stack as the SIS, the LMS, and the CRM. This is the missing link that will drive the metrics you care most about. Getting rigorous at a student-specific level about the experiences each is having is the only way to take actions to make them better — at both a campus level and at an individual level. While the three other systems provide some insight into the student experience via the operational data they generate, they mostly offer lagging indicators. They can tell you that someone hasn’t been in class for three consecutive sessions, isn’t completing assignments, or is in danger of being put on academic probation. But they won’t tell you how the student is feeling. If they’re actually engaged in teaching and learning. If your school doesn’t understand why a student is acting a certain way, it’s not addressing the root problem.”

Read more insights from Qualtrics’ Global Industry Leader in Education, Omar Garriott.

It’s Time to Re-imagine Your Front Door

“Gen Z and Gen Alpha users go online expecting constantly updated content. This doesn’t mean you need to cater to a TikTok or Instagram audience; but it’s worth asking, what if this campus website were TikTok? How would that change the way you think about site and content design? Maybe you employ more video because it can be super engaging. Maybe you share more of the experience on campus — classrooms, mock lectures, the humor found in everyday activities and interactions among students. Universities could consider emphasizing all of the different programs and services on offer. Take a page from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and others that surface multiple suggested offerings they have for you to watch that match to your interest. What would the school’s website be like if you used Netflix as the model? How would you organize the content and would it be on the homepage or a couple of layers down? How would you steer people through?”

Read more Acquia insights from Mediacurrent’s Creative Strategy Director for Product, Elliott Mower.

Seeking a Modern Search Experience

“Why shouldn’t the same search power let the IT organization gain visibility into the operations of its infrastructure? The idea is to observe the entire ecosystem by peering into logs, metrics, traces and more. That would enable the IT staffer to identify what’s running well or poorly, whether server or workstation, application or website. When something goes awry, he or she would be better positioned to resolve issues more quickly and proactively, thereby ensuring better digital experiences for users. Security information and event management (SIEM) has become a valued tool in security operation centers. The idea is to gain insights into the security state of the institution by monitoring data traffic, identifying anomalies and alerting IT for corrective action. What’s needed is a search technology outfitted with machine learning-driven detection rules for threat hunting and security analytics that are aligned to standards, such as a MITRE ATT&CK framework. Then IT can look specifically at what’s happening from a security perspective: Is it a lateral movement? Is it data exfiltration? Is it related to command and control? The faster the visibility, the faster the remediation.”

Read more insights from Elastic’s Senior Lead Solutions Architect, Jared Pane.

When Live Virtual Learning Really Works

“As you assess the caliber of the virtual learning tools your instructors are armed with, make sure they provide the functionality that facilitates a more memorable learning experience. That’s how you can play a role in helping students get and retain more from their courses.

For example, make sure there’s a level of content consistency across sections being taught by different people. You do that by using a platform where the entire presentation with all interactive tools (slides, video, audio, chat threads and exercises) can be stored in a shared system with assigned editing privileges. Also, give your instructors “backstage” controls that will help them monitor the presentation as it unfolds, so that they can understand what the students are viewing. Choose a platform that includes an engagement dashboard, to allow instructors to shift session operations in real time if engagement begins to lag. Essential tools would also include a speaker notes area and a chat, specifically to permit behind-the-scenes collaboration among presenters and moderators. Of course, integration with existing learning management systems and authoring programs is essential. So is security compliance that ensures the data generated before and during class remains private and encrypted and the sessions themselves can’t be breached by unauthorized people.”

Read more insights from Adobe Connect’s Senior Manager of Product Marketing, Vaishali Sangtani.

The Long Wait: Why It’s Time for Higher Ed to Embrace Automation

“What’s unique about education from any other kind of organization is that the typical institution has central IT, of course, but also instructional IT and research IT. If I’m in central IT and I’m standing up an HR application, my goal is to put that system in place with the expectation that it will run forevermore. IT’s job is to keep it running. But in instructional IT, I may be standing up a classroom environment that is only going to last a semester or a lab that’s going to last a couple of weeks. Then I need to tear it down and stand up a brand new one the next time that class or lab is offered. In research IT, I’ll need to spin up hundreds or thousands of nodes to process data for astronomical photography, chemical analysis or whatever the research problem is. When the processing is done and the results are generated, I stop it and scale it all back down again. There’s a temporary nature to so much of what education encompasses and the many systems it relies on. And that’s where automation can really make a big difference.”

Read more insights from Red Hat’s Chief Architect for Education in the North America Public Sector, Daniel Eversmann.

Partnering for Smarter and More Efficient Purchasing

“On the IT front, we’re getting more calls from procurement offices for solutions to support virtual learning in general and specifically, cloud storage and cybersecurity. Air filtration, another category where a pandemic uptick makes sense, isn’t traditional HVAC. These days, facilities operations are investing in more sophisticated “smart” systems that provide remote monitoring and operations, essential for settings where staff are squeezed for time and remote work is just as probable as on-campus work. Finally, there’s furniture. Because of how students will be interacting with one another, institutions are looking for innovative ways to position learners with physical distancing in mind within the classroom and in common areas. They want furniture that can easily be moved and assembled. They also want pieces with accessibility to power, for those environments where there may not be an electrical outlet on the floor or the wall. Vendors are coming up with creative applications for batteries associated with furniture and workstations.”

Read more insights from OMNIA Partners’ Vice President of Education, Alton Campbell.

Download the full Innovation in Education report for more insights from these data thought leaders and additional higher education industry research from Campus Tech.

Overcoming DevOps Challenges with a New Approach

Posted on by Ian Tien

Today, too many government software organizations are in crisis. They face soaring expectations for delivering digital solutions, the challenge of understanding a complex and fast-changing array of new technologies and new threats, and must draw from a limited pool of experienced developers, SRE, and SecOps professionals that are ready to execute in modern environments.

What’s worse, technical talent is too often underutilized. On average, we have seen reports that nearly 40% of developer time is wasted on meetings, interruptions, and other cumbersome processes. Add to this the mounting pressure of incidents, emergencies, and shifting priorities, and it’s no wonder why software leaders say that less than 18% of their teams are truly agile.

When engineers can’t flourish, you should expect to see short tenures, delivery delays, and unstable operations. This is especially true in government, where innovation can often be stifled by legacy processes.

Highly Collaborative Teams are More Productive Teams — But the Wrong Tools Can Hold Them Back

What we do know is that teams with tailored collaboration patterns typically and materially outperformed their peers. Far more than video calls and calendars, developer collaboration is focused on thoughtfully integrating technical processes, workflows, and tools to maximize context and productivity, reducing unnecessary interruptions and ensuring alignment across the software development lifecycle.

But the majority of collaboration and prescribed “productivity” products on the market aren’t built to support technical teams. Because of this, they force users to context switch between tools to accomplish tasks. Often, this interrupts the flow of users across collaboration, task management, and developer processes, impeding the ability of engineers to get work done effectively.

Fortunately, the rise of open source has given developers a voice in changing the status quo. Open source platforms are prevalent and popular because they offer developers access to system source code, making the tools easily extensible and customizable, all while preserving the ability to rapidly integrate with other critical tools in their stack. Thousands of technical teams have contributed to open source projects, advancing real-time messaging beyond the limitations of basic messaging, into unified task, project, and workflow management.

By leveraging the right open source platforms, developers can avoid context switching and dramatically accelerate their software organization’s ability to plan, build, and ship software faster and better, all while retaining full control over sensitive data by self hosting. With the right tools like these, engineers and developers can help their organization achieve and transform digital operations.

Increased Complexity in Digital Operations

Many teams were already struggling to achieve efficient collaboration despite multiple tools that purported to solve the problem of aligning technical teams across the myriad of complex R&D processes. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and the immediate acceleration of remote work and digital transformation, the expectations for digital operations teams have surged.

While virtually every organization is now competing with the ability to build and operate software with increased velocity and quality, too many digital operations teams are buckling under the growing complexity of development toolchains, distributed teams, increased demands for specialization within their functions, knowledge silos, talent shortages, operational bottlenecks, an unprecedented attack surface, and a continuous rise in security risk.

At the same time, the number of applications that will need to be built and operated is exploding. Over 500 million software applications are expected to be built in the next five years. This is with a near-0% unemployment rate amongst software engineers and an expectation of consumer-grade experiences across business tools and applications, and 24/7/365 availability.

Building a Better Future for Digital Operations

So how can we help developers and technical teams move forward? We believe that the first step to mastering and transforming digital operations is to align your teams, tools, and processes across each stage of the development lifecycle – from sprint planning to release to incident management.

Armed with little more than general-purpose collaboration tools built for business users, technical teams are at a significant disadvantage for supporting the complex, fast-changing needs of digital operations at scale. These tools aren’t built for the extensibility, security and bespoke compliance requirements needed to integrate technical teams with the processes and customizations digital operators rely on.

The industry needs a solution to this disconnection. Engineers and developers need a platform built explicitly for digital operations, unifying team communication, task and project management, and workflows into a single point of collaboration. This centralized command center accelerates visibility, alignment and control, and enables teams to operate at the rapid speed of the evolving digital world.

As DevOps teams continue to overcome the challenges of a hybrid workplace and misaligned workflows, the need for this dedicated collaboration platform has become increasingly evident. By breaking down technology and information barriers, stakeholder alignment is also facilitated so that the organizational silos that typically impede digital transformation efforts are no longer a factor.

By making it easier for developers to collaborate, organizations can meet the urgent need and requirement for engineering velocity. For government agencies, meeting this demand will drive not only an accelerated shift to digital government operations, but an increase in overall innovation and quality of software and services for all citizens.

Learn more about Mattermost at www.mattermost.com and download the Mattermost Government Solutions Guide.