It is hard to believe that we are coming up on a year of living with COVID-19. In February 2020, countries around the world were beginning to institute travel restrictions, and organizations were shifting large portions of their teams to working from home. We knew that customers needed to enable their teams to work remotely, very quickly. […]

The Biden administration – less than four months after taking office – has thus far developed a reputation for going “big” with its policy and spending aims. […]

A billion of anything isn’t quite what it used to be, but it’s still a lot. And when that billion is dollars for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) – a great vehicle that has been underutilized because of low funding levels and strict repayment rules – it may yet end up being a real difference-maker across many government agencies looking at IT modernization. […]

President Biden on April 9 released a massive $1.52 trillion fiscal year 2022 spending plan that reflects his vision of an expanded – and expansive – Federal government that boosts spending for domestic programs and addresses issues such as education, affordable housing, public health, racial inequality, and climate change, among many others. […]

Disinformation is undoubtedly on more people’s radars – Federal IT pros included – heading into 2021 and beyond. But just because we know more about it doesn’t mean we are better prepared to face the challenge that disinformation is posing. […]

The United States was once a leader in the collection and utilization of public health data. As the COVID-19 pandemic wears on, the United States must resume its leadership in this domain. […]

With many states admitting to substantial fraudulent payments due to poor management and problematic unemployment insurance (UI) application systems, what are they doing about fraud in other state programs that collectively make up another giant elephant in the room? […]

While the latest Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard shows all agencies have passing total scores, not one agency’s Cyber score changed from the FITARA 10.0 scorecard issued earlier in 2020. […]

The security operations center (SOC) has become the critical hub of Federal agencies’ cyber readiness. SOC analysts keep agencies safely up and running – determining the size and impact of incidents, utilizing threat intelligence, implementing response procedures and collaborating with other staff to address issues. […]

As remote work shifts to hybrid work for the long term, Federal agencies need continued (and even stronger) cloud security. […]

After a decade-long initiative to expand telework, the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the federal government’s workforce to cloud-based telework, practically overnight. While improving workforce flexibility seems like the obvious benefit, federal agencies can also take this opportunity to leverage the extensive ecosystem of open source partners and applications to boost their multicloud modernization efforts. Agencies that work […]

Following the release of the FITARA Scorecard 10.0 in August, discussion about sunsetting the MEGABYTE category of the scorecard has picked up. But, is that really a good idea? […]

As the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic became apparent early this year, the first matter of business for the Federal government was simply getting employees online and ensuring they could carry on with their critical work and missions. This is a unique challenge in the government space due to the sheer size of the Federal workforce and the amount of sensitive data those workers require – everything from personally identifiable information to sensitive national security information. And yet, the Department of Defense, for one, was able to spin up secure collaboration capabilities quite quickly thanks to the cloud, while the National Security Agency recently expanded telework for unclassified work. […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the way agencies function, and forced many to redefine what it means to be connected and modernize for mission success. […]

When agencies began full-scale telework earlier this year, many were not anticipating it would evolve into a long-term workplace strategy. However, in the wake of COVID-19, recent calculations estimate $11 billion in Federal cost-savings per year due to telework, as well as a 15 percent increase in productivity. Agencies are determining how they can continue to modernize – and therefore optimize – to support greater efficiency into the future. […]

Over the past few months, agencies have strengthened remote work tools, increased capacity, improved performance, and upgraded security to enable continuity of operations as employees work from home and in various new locations. […]

The Federal government collects and manages more data outside of traditional data centers than ever before from sources including mobile units, sensors, drones, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications. Teams need to manage data efficiently and securely across the full continuum – edge to core to cloud. […]

The recent, rapid shift to remote work has been a lifeline for the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 virus. But that shift also took an already-growing attack surface and expanded it. Government agencies were being called to rethink their cybersecurity posture and become more resilient even before the pandemic. Now, the novel coronavirus has added an indisputable level of urgency on that demand. […]

COVID-19 has changed daily life as we know it. States are beginning to reopen, despite many case counts continuing to trend upwards, and even the most informed seem to have more questions than answers. Many of the answers we do have, though, are the result of models and simulations run on high-performance computing systems. While we can process and analyze all this data on today’s supercomputers, it will take an exascale machine to process quickly and enable true artificial intelligence (AI). […]

Many more people are working at home these days, and although much of this started with COVID-19, remote work from home (WFH) could become standard procedure for businesses around the world. […]

Our government is facing a challenging moment. Confronted with an unprecedented pandemic, agencies are having to dramatically ramp up their services for our country while large portions of the workforce cannot be in the office. Now more than ever, it is essential that government employees have access to IT systems and tools that are optimized to help them achieve their critical missions. […]

In March, the White House released guidance that encouraged government agencies to maximize telework opportunities for those at high risk of contracting the coronavirus, as well as all employees located in the D.C. area. Though there are still many government employees not yet authorized to telework, this guidance marks a turning point. […]

We’ve spent the last several months in a bit of a surreal version of normal but there is light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. When we emerge from the current environment, the reality is that we will be better off from a security perspective than we were when we went in. The additional need to increase the capacity of access of cloud-based apps, VPN or “other” have required us to think a lot harder about the security that comes along with this extra access to the point where “building it in” makes a lot more sense than “bolting it on.” […]

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework, initially issued in early 2014, outlines five functions with regard to cybersecurity risk: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. Of these functions, those on the far left encapsulate measures that could be considered pre-breach; those on the right, post-breach. Far too often, however, government agencies tip the scales too far to the left. […]

During these unprecedented times, it’s more important than ever to maximize the value of our data. As first responders, health care professionals, and government officials lead the charge on COVID-19 response efforts, they need real-time insight into rapidly-changing conditions to make the best decisions for public health. […]

When you hear the terms “artificial intelligence” (AI) and “machine learning” (ML) (and let’s be honest, if you have even a sliver of interest in technology, it’s difficult not to), hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) may not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, HCI is beginning to play an important role in high-performance use cases like AI and ML with its ability to capture, process, and reduce vast quantities of data at the source of creation in a small form factor. In this blog, the third in a 3-part series on hyperconverged infrastructure, we’ll examine the role HCI is playing in deploying a complete AI solution. If you’d like to read the previous blogs, you can read about the role that HCI plays in enabling a disaster recovery solution and how it is changing the dynamics for edge computing and remote offices.   […]

Most of us have a standard list of go-to passwords for various logins and websites – each fluctuating slightly with upper or lowercase letters, extra numbers, symbols and punctuation. Some of us keep them scribbled on a notepad, while others click “remember me” when logging onto sites, to speed up the process and relieve the stress of remembering them time and time again. […]

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is playing a significant role in building an enterprise multi-cloud environment. The benefits are well documented – you can learn more about them in a new white paper developed in collaboration with ViON, Fujitsu, and Nutanix, […]

A perfectly tailored suit is an investment. It’s worth it to pay for the perfect fit, high-quality material appropriate for the occasion, and a color that makes your eyes pop. […]

The benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) as a foundation for building a cloud platform are well documented, as organizations are turning to HCI to simplify complexity for both hardware and virtualized environments. We’ve recently published a white paper in collaboration with Nutanix and Fujitsu on this topic, Simplifying Multi-Cloud and Securing Mission Progress. But recent research from Meritalk1 highlights that HCI represents many other use cases beyond cloud. In this first installment in a series of 3 blogs, we’ll examine how HCI is impacting disaster recovery (DR) in the data center. […]