A New Era in Government Cybersecurity

Posted on by Alex Whitworth

Securing government systems was a complex undertaking even before the pandemic. In response to that crisis, agencies rapidly deployed cloud technology, mobile devices and collaboration tools for remote employees — and added new vulnerabilities and IT management challenges to an already long list of cybersecurity priorities. Malicious actors have taken note of the new opportunities and continue to mount increasingly sophisticated attacks on government systems and critical infrastructure. To keep pace with those risks, government teams need multifaceted yet holistic strategies that address a wide range of threats to network endpoints, identity and access management, and data. In addition, agencies must strike the right balance of productivity and security for a mix of on-site and remote employees — a key concern of 75% of the respondents to a recent FCW reader survey. Fortunately, zero trust has been gaining traction because of its ability to address key challenges related to identity management, endpoint security and data protection. Interest in zero trust has skyrocketed thanks to a mandate in the Biden administration’s 2021 Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. But although zero trust can play a key role in ensuring that only authorized users have access to IT systems and data, it doesn’t always protect against human mistakes. In addition, security responsibilities have crossed traditional internal boundaries, and agencies are finding that they need to unify the priorities of security teams and mission owners. Learn how agencies can continue to evolve cybersecurity architecture and strategy, given the increased attack rate and creativity of malicious actors in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

The Power of Real-Time Cyber Intelligence

“Government agencies are realizing that if they are going to mitigate cybersecurity risks and respond to breaches more quickly, they need access to real-time operational intelligence. However, they also recognize that their security products and intelligence sources must be readily integrated. A security operations center (SOC) can’t function when it has 50 products that don’t talk to one another and whose data can’t be easily fused and normalized. Many organizations try to manually corroborate a notable security event with other data, such as external threat intelligence, feedback from an endpoint detection and response platform, or information from the Department of Homeland Security. A manual process is slow, inefficient and ultimately doomed to failure.”

Read more insights from Splunk’s chief cybersecurity advisor for public sector, Paul Kurtz.

Treating Identity as Critical Infrastructure

“Agencies can assess the state of their identity infrastructure by continually asking whether they are delivering the right capabilities to their employees, the public and other customers and whether they are doing so in a way that matches how people live and work today. We all have high expectations for capabilities and usability because of our daily interactions with smartphones. We’re used to conducting our business quickly and efficiently, and agencies should likewise be building enterprise systems that support the fast and efficient delivery of government services. Furthermore, agencies should build those systems with a line of sight to the future.”

Read more insights from Okta’s federal chief security officer, Sean Frazier.

The Importance of Future-Proofing Cybersecurity

“Access control through multifactor authentication is an important aspect of both directives. The combination of username and password is not sufficient to secure access to IT systems. Agencies also need to deploy strong multifactor authentication that relies on some type of hardware- or software-based token for granting access to the environment and then to the data. Furthermore, the White House executive order mandates the protection of data through encryption not only when it is at rest but also when it is moving to and from the network edge and beyond.”

Read more insights from Thales TCT’s deputy CTO, Gina Scinta.

The Game-Changing Nature of Cyber Resiliency

“The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the largest modernization effort the government has ever seen. However, in addition to the many benefits of that modernization, hybrid work environments have added an ever-growing number of endpoints and created new identity-based vulnerabilities for attackers to exploit. Agencies can be more strategic in their approach to endpoint security by focusing on cyber resiliency. Although the term has been around for several years, it has been emphasized recently by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).”

Read more insights from SentinelOne’s vice president of federal sales, Todd Helfrich.

Galvanizing Agencies into Action on Cybersecurity

“The Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity has spurred agencies to modernize the way they protect IT systems and data. Now there is a shared commitment to the steps that IT leaders should take, and agencies have been galvanized into action. For example, zero trust was mostly just a buzzword for agencies prior to the executive order, and now it is something that federal agencies are seriously exploring. They’re going beyond reading whitepapers to asking for vendor demos and testing ideas.”

Read more insights from Cribl’s senior director of market strategy, Nick Heudecker.

Aligning Your Digital Collaboration to Zero Trust

“Guest access provides people outside your organization access to content inside your M365 workspaces (i.e., Teams, SharePoint and Groups). A health care-focused agency could use guest accounts to collaborate with grantees and their site staff or academic researchers. A defense-focused agency could use guest access to coordinate with local law enforcement to plan incident response or correspond about special event planning. Despite the benefits, agencies need policies and reporting when using features like guest access to ensure your information stays protected.”

Read more insights from AvePoint’s director of federal strategy for public sector, Jay Leask.

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

Adapting with Evolving Higher Education Challenges

Posted on by Tim Boltz

For many colleges and universities, the global pandemic served as a wake-up call for more innovative teaching models. They quickly discovered that remote learning is no longer an occasional tool for specific situations. Instead, a mix of in-person and online platforms has become an imperative to ensure digital equity and educational excellence. Even before the pandemic, researchers cited the importance of course design and the need for a pedagogical shift to ensure success in blended learning. Now, many believe that as faculty and students become more proficient with the technology and adapt to online education, outcomes will improve. Close collaboration between faculty and technology teams is also important as both groups adapt to new teaching models. To ensure clear communication, many institutions will need to invest in cameras, microphones and speaker systems, and many classes may benefit from a technology assistant who keeps track of the messages students post and resolves any technical issues. Incorporating such modern tools alongside institutions’ legacy solutions presents a diverse set of challenges. In the Campus Technology survey, staying within budget constraints (44%) was the top challenge cited by respondents, and it goes hand in hand with choosing the right products, services and solutions (41%). Technological challenges also include getting legacy and modern solutions to work together (36%), sharing data between legacy and modern systems (27%), and managing and securing a diverse IT ecosystem (25%). Learn how, by investing in further modernization, your institution can boost its ability to meet current demands while maintaining flexibility to respond to the unknown challenges ahead in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Education report.

Embracing the New Normal in Higher Education

“By allowing students of different backgrounds, perspectives, and ages to interact with one another, a hybrid or HyFlex approach enriches the classroom experience. That flexibility should be used as a recruitment tool: By offering a range of options for in-person and online learning, institutions can dramatically expand their reach nationally and even internationally. The success of the new normal in education hinges on being able to measure student engagement. In a face-to-face classroom, instructors can note whether students are making eye contact and how many of them are raising their hands or asking questions. At Class Technologies, we enable instructors to bring that same emphasis on student outcomes into an online format.”

Read more insights from Class Technology’s Senior Director of Advocacy and Community, Dr. Kim Oppelt.

Using Data Analytics to Enhance Student Services

“In addition to automation, artificial intelligence can transform the way colleges and universities provide services to their students. When higher education leaders understand the value and availability of AI, they can create a vision for its adoption. Then data analysts can use AI to accelerate the institution’s delivery of student services and improve its ability to predict outcomes early, enabling educators to address trouble spots early or invest in key initiatives. With AI, analysts can focus at the level of the entire student population, a certain demographic profile or the individual student. For example, AI can integrate with a campus learning system to identify students who may be at risk of dropping out. To be successful, AI must be part of an institution’s overall data management strategy, and the IT infrastructure should be built or updated to support that strategy.”

Read more insights from Cloudera’s Senior Solutions Engineer, Brian Hagan.

A Cybersecurity Mesh Speeds Digital Transformation

“Research firm Gartner defines a cybersecurity mesh as a “flexible, composable architecture that integrates widely distributed and disparate security services” — in other words, it enables institutions to leverage a suite of complementary tools. A mesh architecture creates efficiency and greater coverage across the digital surface, while enabling the IT team to understand what’s happening on its network and better prepare for the next cybersecurity event. This concept can also reduce the number of point security solutions and products. To make the business case for taking that approach, focus on demonstrating return on investment. A mesh architecture reduces costs because it consolidates tools and services while simplifying digital transitions. The mesh components will enable standardized training and raise the bar on knowledge transfer across the distributed IT environment.”

Read more insights from Fortinet’s Field CISO for Education, Bob Turner.

Why Student Experience Equals Student Success

“Student needs are so individualized that a single, one-size-fits-all approach to services is ineffective. Institutions need systems that can constantly learn from students as they’re navigating their experience on campus and then take student-specific action. Qualtrics’ experience management platform enables students to share feedback in a host of different ways and then crucially, pairs that data with internal systems to help institutions gain a holistic view of those students. Campus leaders can listen, understand and act through a platform that gathers information and converts it into real-time insights for decision-makers. In addition, the Qualtrics platform uses artificial intelligence to help schools understand what friction points exist in the student journey and then helps to automate actions, such as connecting students with the right resources, at scale. By giving the right people the right information at the right time, AI enables institutions to intervene at the moments that matter most. It also helps decision-makers measure the impact of those actions.”

Read more insights from Qualtrics’ Vice President Higher Education Strategy, Joshua Sine.

Pivoting to Continuous Modernization in Higher Education

“Continuous modernization involves making small changes and regularly deploying those changes under a methodology called continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD). Users try out new features, and developers get immediate validation and testing throughout the entire process, which results in targeted and ongoing improvements. Another key element is automation. When rote tasks such as spinning up virtual machines, configuring networks or resolving users’ help tickets are automated, IT administrators can focus on more complex activities, such as improving processes or incorporating new technologies. In addition, containerization makes it easy to migrate applications and workloads back and forth from on-premises systems to the cloud as needed.”

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

Using the Power of Data to Support Collaboration

“Data analysis can help institutions gain a fuller understanding of their cybersecurity posture. For example, it can enable risk-based alerting, so staffers are not overwhelmed with security alerts that aren’t important. In addition, many institutions are merging their development, security and operations cycles in a methodology called DevSecOps. That collaborative approach ensures that security is an integral element of IT systems rather than an afterthought. Collaboration also results in deeper insights. When institutions can access and analyze student experience and outcomes, they have a much clearer picture of what they need to do from a strategy and planning perspective to enhance academic programs and student services.”

Read more insights from Splunk’s Strategic Advisor, Frank Myers, and Business Development Manager, Elizabeth Thompson.

A Data-Informed Approach to Recruiting and Retaining Faculty

“UT Austin has a strong commitment to nominating faculty for major awards across racial and gender lines. However, we wanted to pinpoint any gaps in the nomination process to make sure we retain talented faculty members by recognizing a diversity of research. We chose to partner with Tableau because the company offers a user-friendly process for developing self-service dashboards. In this case, an awards analysis dashboard helps us quickly identify under-awarded faculty in each department and drill down into race/ethnicity and gender information. As a result, we have achieved better equity in the awards nomination process and improved our faculty recruitment and retention efforts.”

Read more insights from the University of Texas at Austin’s Chief Data Officer and Executive Director of Institutional Reporting, Research and Information Systems, Shiva Jaganathan.

Creating a Single Source of Data Truth

“The ability to make those kinds of informed decisions hinges on robust data sharing. Unfortunately, many institutions still lack consistency in data access and management. And when data exists in silos, there is no single source of truth. Breaking down silos to give end users the power to do their own research is crucial, and that culture change starts at the top. Leaders must drive the demand for universal access to data so that everyone can be confident in the data they’re using and the decisions they’re making. At Tableau, our mission is to help people see and understand data. We continually enhance our product to ensure that decision-makers at all levels have access to the data and insights they need.”

Read more insights from Tableau’s Regional Vice President of Education and Nonprofit Sales, Cassidy Macias, and Vice President of U.S. Education Enterprise Sales, Adam Ingram-Eiser.

Discovering the Endless Possibilities of Automation

“From recruitment through graduation and beyond, automation can play a crucial role in ensuring that students have the experience the college or university wants them to have. Automation can help students succeed, and after they graduate, automation can be used to stay in touch — for example, by congratulating them on a new job when their LinkedIn profile changes and encouraging them to give back to the university. In the past couple of years, a mental health crisis has arisen in higher education, and many students withdrew from institutions or struggled to keep up with their studies. Tackling the issue should be a top priority in higher education because the crisis will continue for at least a few more years as people become accustomed to going back to campuses and in-person learning. Automated services can help institutions check in with students to see how they’re doing and connect them with mental health resources if necessary.”

Read more insights from UiPath’s Global State, Local and Regional Government Industry Lead, Dan Horan.

A More Immersive Experience for Students and Staff

“Zoom was a market leader in higher education even before the pandemic because our tools are affordable and easy to use. We have built a unified communications platform on top of our popular videoconferencing technology and, for the past two years, have focused on creating a superior on-campus experience by integrating communication across all operating systems and expanding capabilities via cloud telephony with Zoom Phone. For example, among many amazing features, using the Zoom application on a smartphone gives users the ability to have Zoom Phone voicemail messages transcribed and sent to their e-mail. In addition, while most people are familiar with the chat function that’s enabled during a Zoom meeting, we have a separate, robust Zoom Chat collaboration tool built into our unified communications stack. It allows users to create communication channels for particular projects or teams and conduct one-on-one or group chats.”

Read more insights from Zoom’s Global Education Marketing Lead, Johann Zimmern.

Download the full Innovation in Education report for more insights from these IT modernization thought leaders and for additional industry research from Campus Technology.

Locking Down Information Management Security on Campus

Posted on by Tim Boltz

According to one report, ransomware attacks against higher education doubled in 2020 compared to 2019, with an average ransom demand of $447,000. Traditionally, criminals tended to be opportunists; they’d strike at random and hope to get lucky. Now they’ve organized into highly sophisticated networks and cartels that will target any entity of substance they consider a viable target. Higher ed fits the profile, but some institutions are better positioned to withstand cybersecurity attacks than others. A combination of zero-trust and defense-in-depth allows these schools to defend against malware and ransomware. Ultimately, the job of the cybersecurity professional in higher ed is to “plan for the worst day,” as one cybersecurity expert recently noted during a Campus Technology leadership summit. But how can agencies overcome these obstacles to adapt to an increasingly targeted and threatening cybersecurity landscape? Learn how your institution can safeguard against threats, overcome evolving technical demands, and more in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Education report.

Gaining Total Visibility

“We can no longer piece together a set of disparate tools to solve acute security or compliance issues. Really, the only way forward is to use a mix of integrated security technologies that deliver, first, a view into traffic and, second, a flexible enforcement model that relies on artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify attacks. The solution starts and ends with visibility. The goal is to understand how data flows through the network, cloud and endpoints so that IT can provide a consistent security view no matter how services are being used. It’s important to understand how your users are tapping those services and to surface those things that traditional tools can’t see. As one example, we have a service called Xpanse, which will take an outside-in view of the network and start to build relationships, looking at how endpoints are interacting with other endpoints that are outside of the network, contributing to the building of a map showing how the institution is connected to the rest of the world.”

Read more insights from Palo Alto Networks’ Security Strategist, Hunter Ely.

A Unifying Viewpoint for Security

“Automation of the easy security work — known threats, known responses, malware detection, cleanup — addresses both problems, and everybody wins. The campus gains better operational success. And when humans don’t have to intervene with the ordinary, they’re free to do more interesting work. They grow in their positions, because they’re not just clicking buttons all day. Automation is especially important in an era of remote status quo and zero-trust. IT has to assume that there’s a high probability of any authentication request being nefarious. And that means being able to look at data in context: Is this person at a higher risk? Is the laptop or smartphone compromised? Should we let them on the network today? Have we scanned this device in the last three days? Then let’s not allow them access to this HR data. If they get their machine scanned, then they can come back and try again. While higher ed has long been predicated on allowing open access, now that can only happen when it’s the appropriate thing to do. Users have to be classified — student, researcher, staffer — and access has to be controlled. When everything looks normal, they get unfettered access. But when their machine or account is compromised, the access should be denied. Easier said than done, right?”

Read more insights from Splunk’s Minister of Magic, Jesse Trucks.

AI and the Carrot Approach to Zero-Trust Network Access

“Some 20 years ago, I was outfitted with a BlackBerry device, and it was the first time I could get e-mail from the road. But it wasn’t the built-in keyboard that made that device so special. It was really the fact that my organization’s IT department trusted the BlackBerry security model so deeply, I could use my device to access sensitive corporate information. BlackBerry’s mission hasn’t changed. But now, that security emphasis is used to secure some 500 million endpoints — including cars — produced by various companies. That’s why higher education has rediscovered BlackBerry. The university IT organization trusts the company to keep devices secure, whether they’re owned by the institution or individual people — students, staff or faculty. And now, without having to use a college-owned device that navigates through the college-owned firewall, users can once again be liberated, just like we were two decades ago, when we first got a taste of the freedom allowed by mobility.”

Read more insights from BlackBerry’s Director of Sales, Chris Russo.

Protecting the Campus from the Outside In

“Is it any wonder threats are on the rise? As the number of system and data breaches rack up in higher education, security experts have adopted a defense-in-depth stance. Putting multiple defensive measures in place begins with a baseline security posture that wants to understand everything coming into and going out of the network, preferably in real time. The tricky part is achieving that level of visibility and response when the threats could originate from any one of the many thousands of devices accessing institutional resources. One route is deploying domain name system (DNS) security. Let’s think about DNS for a moment. It may be decades-old but it’s still heavily relied upon; without it, the entire network is shut off from the internet. Regardless of their location, endpoints require DNS to connect to any application, service or data source. And so does malware, which uses DNS at multiple stages of an attack. That’s why DNS is a marvelous transport system for malfeasance. Traditional security mechanisms don’t police it well because there’s so much of it — millions of DNS queries a day for the typical university.”

Read more insights from Infoblox’s Director and General Manager for U.S. Education, Rufus Coleman.

Uncovering the Hidden Costs of Cloud Security

“While the public cloud has been a boon for higher education on many fronts, it has also become a conundrum, especially when it comes to storage for the purposes of security and safety. As the needs add up, so does the expense. The first not-so-hidden cost is the baseline cost of data storage. As an example, think about the capacity required to sustain video recordings of people entering and exiting buildings on campus. A network of 100 cameras, each capturing 8 frames per second with a modest resolution of 720 pixels, operating continuously at just medium quality, would require 200 terabytes of capacity. On Amazon Web Services, the cost for storing 200 TB on S3 would be about $56,000 for the year. If the institution were to upgrade to newer cameras capturing 15 frames per second at 1080 pixels, generating five times as much data — a full petabyte — the expense would quintuple, to about $289,000. Microsoft Azure would be slightly under that ($262,000) and Google Cloud a bit more ($327,000). Second, there is the additional hidden cost of the traditional route those cloud storage providers follow for transactions related to the data. They’ve all predicated the value of their services on fractional pricing (a tenth of a penny for this, a couple of pennies for that) for seemingly insignificant activities, such as egress or API requests.”

Read more insights from Wasabi’s Senior Director of Product Marketing, David Boland.

Staying on Top of Cybersecurity: A Conversation with Two University CISOs

“In March 2020, I was feeling more comfortable in terms of what our border looked like and the things that we were protecting our constituents from. Then the pandemic happened and people started grabbing devices off of their desks and old laptops out of storage closets and dragging them home to put on home networks — and who knows how they were being secured, if they were being secured at all. I thought I had a fairly good plan in place and tools deployed across my infrastructure to protect us, but that was all out the window. And so, over the last year we’ve been looking at services and products we can deploy that will protect our users as well at home as we could when they were on campus. And there’s nothing like having a community of your peers to have those conversations with and to learn what they’re doing, how long it took them to get there, what bumps they ran into along the way and ultimately, how they were able to steer around those. That’s significantly beneficial to all of us, and that is a huge value of participating with Internet2 overall and through the NET+ program for specific cloud and security solutions.”

Read more insights from Tom Dugas, CISO for Duquesne University, and Rick Haugerud, CISO for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Community-Powered Problem-Solving

“We facilitate the community engaging with each other to identify best practices. For example, let’s say there’s a particular challenge that a campus is trying to figure out. They may go into a community call, where campuses can ask their peers: How do you solve this problem? And then they can get immediate feedback. Or there are many ways institutions collaborate digitally, including e-mail lists, Slack channels and wikis, where they can engage with peers to identify best practices. That is all part of the NET+ program, where advisory boards and community events help to foster more optimal service offerings and benchmarking. And a program manager like myself is engaged with and supports these types of discussions. After a number of campuses have verbalized similar challenges, we’ll realize maybe there’s something there that we need to write up, to share broadly with the community, where they can look at a frequently asked questions repository and find the answers to their questions. And that’s even faster than going and asking their peers.”

Read more insights from Internet2’s Program Manager for Security and Identity, Nick Lewis.

Download the full Innovation in Education report for more insights from these cybersecurity thought leaders and additional industry research from CampusTech.

Building a More Secure Cloud

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

Government officials nationwide had to accelerate modernization initiatives to ensure that teleworking employees could access networks and data from remote locations. For many agencies, that meant a higher reliance on cloud technology and a possible expansion of their cybersecurity vulnerabilities in an environment already attractive to hackers. In response to the security challenges raised by the cloud, the federal government has provided myriad foundational documents, guidelines and strategies to help agencies create a strong security posture, including the Cloud Smart strategy and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). Cloud technology has a crucial role to play in agencies’ ability to modernize IT systems and take advantage of the latest technological innovations. Given this importance, cloud adoption must keep pace with security efforts. Read the latest insights from industry thought leaders in government cloud security and FedRAMP in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government^® report.

Cloud and the Customer Experience

“The emphasis on user-centered design is changing the way applications are created. In the past, many government applications were built from the perspective of the agency rather than from the perspective of the end user. The flexible, innovative nature of cloud technology makes it easier for agencies to improve the efficacy of their applications and what they ultimately deliver. In addition, cloud technologies can help agencies start getting a 360-degree view of how they interact with citizens, business partners and other agencies and even begin personalizing those experiences. In addition, software that manages, authenticates and verifies people’s credentials can ensure privacy while streamlining the customer experience. IDEA codifies the use of secure credentials across platforms and therefore will accelerate the use of trusted credentials in multiple environments so that people will be even more willing to conduct online transactions with the government.”

Read more insights from Acquia’s Vice President of Federal Sector, Peter Durand.

Why MultiCloud and Zero Trust Are Now Essential

“The coronavirus pandemic has underscored the government’s need to offer a secure cloud environment that allows employees to access their data and applications anywhere, anytime and at virtually infinite scale. Many agencies found themselves unprepared to support the sudden move to telework in response to the pandemic. Some didn’t have enough VPNs or smart-card readers for their employees’ remote devices, for example. Google Cloud customers that were already using G Suite or Cloud Identity were able to make the transition to telework smoothly without the need for VPNs or other special technology. That was due in part to G Suite’s reliance on a zero trust architecture, which shifts access control from the network’s perimeter to individual users and devices.”

Read more insights from Google Cloud’s Director of Federal, Shannon Sullivan.

The Route to Secure, Fast Cloud Adoption

“SASE and CNAP pull together a number of different technologies and categories. But those are point-in-time definitions. Technologies evolve and their functions change over time, so rather than think about what category of product they need, agencies should focus on what they’re trying to accomplish and the business outcomes they want to achieve. Agencies should look for a platform that was built natively in the cloud. It should apply persistent protection to sensitive information no matter where it goes; offer complete visibility into data, context and user behavior across the entire environment; and take real-time action to correct policy violations and stop security threats.”

Read more insights from McAfee’s Senior Vice President of the Cloud Security Business Unit, Rajiv Gupta.

Cloud Security Considerations for DOD Mission Partners

“Moving to the cloud requires a considerable level of effort and expense. Ensuring the security of applications or services running in a cloud adds another layer of complexity. When choosing a cloud service provider, organizations need to understand what security controls they will effectively inherit from that provider and what controls they will have to build and deploy on their own. For government agencies, FedRAMP provides a host of security levels and a robust number of security controls in a well-documented package, but Defense Department agencies also need to understand if they have any additional impact-level requirements for their applications and mission-critical data. As mission partners move to the cloud, they need to make sure that approved cloud providers can meet those baseline security and impact-level requirements.”

Read more insights from GDIT’s milCloud® 2.0 Cloud Services Portfolio Lead, Jeffrey Phelan.

The Evolution of Trusted Connections

“Under TIC 3.0, agencies can still use network proxies, cloud access security brokers, and security information and event management (SIEM) tools to build a strong security framework, but they don’t have to run everything through a TIC. And users don’t have to struggle with increased latency and network complexity. Instead, the end-user experience is streamlined because cloud-native tools are handling processes and workloads. Agencies end up with a clean omnichannel experience for employees because their location no longer matters. Whether they are working on an iPad at home or a desktop computer at a government office, the security level and user experience are the same.”

Read more insights from Okta’s Solution Engineer, Habib Hourani.

Cloud: One Size Does Not Fit All

“Cloud is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, finding the right fit depends on knowing agencies’ customers, the type of information they’re processing and their user base. Then it’s a question of aligning what the customer needs with the cloud offerings that are available. FedRAMP has been very successful at making that fit easier. The program brings transparency and consistency to the government’s use of cloud technology. Agencies know that an authorized company’s product or service has been rigorously reviewed under FedRAMP and that the government’s continuous monitoring program will provide information about how vulnerabilities are mitigated during the term of service.

Read more insights from SAP National Security Services’ Vice President and CISO, Ted Wagner.

How Cloud Makes Telework Smarter

“Smartsheet Gov enables employees to complete tasks more easily, efficiently and securely by working with systems on an automated or integrated basis. In addition, employees can access Smartsheet from wherever they are. They can share information and the results of their work via dashboards that multiple employees can view at one time and continue that seamless collaboration with their colleagues even when everyone is working from home. Smartsheet datasets are housed in a secure, FedRAMP-authorized cloud environment, which assures agencies that they can adhere to the same security protocols from outside the office. For example, if an agency needs to conduct a yearly audit that would normally take place with all the participants at a physical location, they can do the work remotely using Smartsheet Gov to run the same playbook, the same audit and the same workflow regardless of where those employees reside. Such borderless teams can reduce costs while increasing employee satisfaction and productivity.”

Read more insights from Smartsheet’s Vice President of Security, Risk and Compliance, Ignacio Martinez.

Visibility is Essential for Cloud Security

“The nature of an agency’s mission, data protection needs and other requirements suggest that multi-cloud and hybrid environments will be the norm. As we migrate to these new locales, there is an exponential deluge of data scattered across multiple systems and endpoints. It is critical that agencies have granular visibility into all the devices, workloads and applications running across these environments so that they can gain operational and security insights. The fidelity of data is another crucial factor because without it any technology has its limits and decisions may not ensure successful outcomes. To allay any fears about security, FedRAMP, a standardized framework for security assessments, was introduced. It has grown to be the gold standard for cloud security today.

Read more insights from Splunk’s Director of Industry Marketing for Public Sector and Education, Ashok Sankar.

How the Cloud is Redefining Security

“The Trusted Internet Connections Initiative was created in 2007 after the Office of Management and Budget conducted a study that found thousands of unprotected internet connections at agencies. Back then, we were using the internet mainly for email and web browsing, so when the government mandated that all internet traffic must go through a trusted connection, it made sense. But over the years, agencies have moved workloads to the cloud, and now employees’ activities rarely travel through an agency’s data center. As a result, TIC became a barrier to cloud adoption. The TIC 3.0 draft guidance, however, is a crucial step toward removing those obstacles.”

Read more insights from Zscaler’s Vice President of Global Government, Stephen Kovac.

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

| Carahsoft

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