FedScoop Radio

The shift to remote work during the pandemic has given ransomware attackers a wider foothold to exploit IT vulnerabilities, forcing federal IT leaders to build new trust mechanisms and develop stronger safeguards to secure their data, say security experts in a new FedScoop podcast. The sudden increase in personal computing devices connecting to agency networks — and the ability to compromise the home networks they dial in from — have made it easier for ransomware hackers to find pathways into agency data systems. Building a comprehensive protection strategy around those additional endpoints and ensuring data is properly stored and protected are critical steps for agencies to take now, according to Mike Malaret, director of sales engineering for defense and intelligence communities at Veritas Technologies. But he and Veritas colleagues Barry Levine, director federal healthcare and civilian strategic programs, and Senior Director Dave Cerjan, also stress the importance of having modern data backup and recovery systems in place, so that in the event that ransomware attacks do occur, agencies have the means to isolate their backup data in order to recover quickly. Sponsored by Veritas Technologies and Carahsoft. Guests: Barry Levine, Director, Federal Healthcare, Veritas Technologies Dave Cerjan, Senior Director, Civilian Strategic Programs, Veritas Technologies Mike Malaret, Director, Sales Engineering, Defense and Intelligence Communities, Veritas Technologies Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Security in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Social safety nets have proven to be especially vital during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. But in some cases, the underlying legacy IT infrastructure supporting the modern delivery of those services has failed them. Artificial intelligence and machine learning, however, have played an increasingly important role in helping agencies adapt to the challenges of the pandemic — particularly with volume and scale. “Volume is a significant problem for all of the social safety net programs. They are seeing record numbers of applications and because the systems that support those programs are typically older legacy systems — some of them as old as 40 years old — they can't scale to meet that demand,” Winkler says. On top of that, the CARES Act — which provided relief in response to the coronavirus — created some new programs that the inflexible legacy systems could not readily incorporate. “The real issue is how does technology — and how will agencies — continue to serve this high volume of clients as we begin to reopen and recover?” she says in the podcast. Sponsored by Google Cloud. Guest: Denise Winkler, Strategic Business Executive, Global Public Sector Group, Google Cloud Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage from the "Future-Ready Government” series on www.fedscoop.com/listen and www.statescoop.com/listen

Federal agencies are finding more ways to adopt robotic process automation (RPA) tools to meet the needs of citizens and to help their employees use their time more productively. Agency leaders from Customs and Border Protection and Department of Labor discuss how they are offloading mundane business tasks so federal workers can focus on more valuable work. “Most adoption of RPA starts in back-office applications. It starts out in finance, HR and IT services" and reduces the instances of human error or fraud that drive up costs, adds UiPath executive Christopher Townsend to the conversation. Hear the discussion on the benefits RPA brings in offloading workloads to shift staff to higher-value work. Guests: Louis S. Charlier, deputy CIO for the U.S. Department of Labor, Sunil Madhugiri, CTO for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Christopher Townsend, vice president of federal sales, UiPath Host: Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

As federal agencies have worked to engage more with citizens in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve looked to artificial intelligence to help with the spike in people seeking information and services. Agencies saw a major uptick in citizens just wanting more information on how the virus is spread, its symptoms and how many people had contracted it. As measures kicked in to stop the spread of the virus, almost immediately that transitioned into Americans seeking services like unemployment. Jeff Brown discusses how AI and chatbots are proving instrumental to answering frequently asked questions for a majority of calls, freeing up telephone lines for more pressing issues. Sponsored by Google Cloud. Guest: Jeff Brown, Strategic Business Executive, Global Public Sector, Google Cloud Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage about preparing a “Future-Ready Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a greater need to analyze data from outside government agencies' purview to better inform decisions on how and when employees should return to offices — things like travel patterns, supply chains or health developments. In this podcast, experts discuss data management and analysis tools to help agency leaders mitigate health risks and supply chain weakness throughout the pandemic. Sponsored by TIBCO. Guests (left to right): Cuong Nguyen, Vice President, Federal Sales and Michael O’Connell, Chief Analytics Officer at TIBCO Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

As employees across government work from home, collaboration tools are increasingly critical to maintaining productivity. However, when enabling both productivity and efficiency, there are boundaries to how much you can really gain, and the boundaries are finite, says Smartsheet's Chris Aherne in this podcast. He cites a study from Deloitte showing that digital transformation is “a game of diminishing returns, even as labor productivity is rising.” He discusses a new form of enterprise collaboration tools called collaborative work management tools — or CWM — to help teams get more visibility into how work is getting executed across the enterprise. Sponsored by Smartsheet and AWS. Guest: Chris Aherne, Regional Vice President, Federal Sales, Smartsheet Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

As agencies at all levels of government look to offer citizens tailored experiences similar to what they get in the private sector, predictive analytics are becoming an increasingly important part of that interaction. In the private sector, consumers now expect a personalized experience in the first minutes or hours after interacting with an entity and public sector organizations should be no different. “Really, if you think about it, agencies from public health, to post offices or similar constituent service organizations, really should be thinking about how the expectations of their constituents can be met,” says Google Cloud's Quinn Chasan in this podcast. Sponsored by Google Cloud. Guest: Quinn Chasan, Head of Customer Analytics, Public Sector, Google Cloud Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Open source solutions are becoming an increasingly important part of enterprise systems. And in many cases, they’re giving federal agencies a superior and more secure alternative to using proprietary applications. There are hundreds of thousands of open source projects out there today, and demand for enterprise open source solutions continues to grow, according to Alan Clark, who works in SUSE’s CTO Office focusing on emerging technologies and open source. One reason, he says, stems from the evolution within the open source community to adopt emerging technology solutions including containerization, microservices and artificial intelligence. The community also has been instrumental in helping to quickly spot and fix security flaws. As a result, open source solutions are actually more secure than many proprietary applications, where the coding often remains hidden “in a black box.” Sponsored by SUSE. Guest: Alan Clark, CTO Office, SUSE Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Recent advances in microprocessor architecture and performance are giving federal agencies reasons to take a second look at upgrading their legacy infrastructure, rather than just moving their operations to the cloud. “One of the things that we think is really changing is [the need to] erase old technical debt … and drive digital transformation and security transformation,” says Heath Muchmore. Today’s faster, more flexible and efficient microprocessor offerings enable the new workloads of AI, machine learning, artificial and augmented reality on premises in ways that matches the speed and performance of the cloud. Sponsored by Dell Technologies and AMD. Guest (left to right): Rick Indyke, Public Sector Business Development Manager, AMD and Heath Muchmore, Chief Architect, Office of the Chief Technology Officer, Dell Federal Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen

Doing business with the Department of Defense has never been easy. But it’s about to get more complicated for tens of thousands of defense contractors and suppliers who must now prove they can meet a complex set of cybersecurity requirements as part of the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program. CMMC is DoD’s latest attempt to stem the tide of intellectual property loss and data exfiltration within its complex supply chain. “The United States is losing between $600 billion and $1 trillion in intellectual property to foreign powers each year,” much of it from within the Defense Industrial Base, says Ryan Bonner. Sponsored by Cisco. Guests (left to right): Ryan Bonner, Independent Compliance Consultant focused on Cybersecurity Regulations for Defense Contractors and Andy Stewart, Senior Federal Strategist, Cisco Systems Host: Wyatt Kash, SVP, Content Strategy, Scoop News Group Look for more coverage of “IT Modernization in Government” on www.fedscoop.com/listen