Federal technology has paralleled the commercial world in its expansion to millions of endpoints. On one hand, this means better information from something like an intrusion sensor. On the other hand, it means the attack surface has just expanded exponentially.

It has come to a point where there has been a normalization of breaches. Unfortunately, this does not mean one can neglect protecting your agency from external threats.

ZeroFox specializes in understanding external threat security. They have been around since 2013 and “Zero” in on protecting apps, data, people, domains, and API’s.

During the interview, AJ Nash goes into considerable detail when he differentiates between the surface web, the deep web, and the dark web.

He does not realize it, but he is a differentiator as well.   ZeroFox relies on leaders like AJ Nash who have considerable experience in the intelligence community and understand the levels of security that are necessary to protect sensitive federal systems.

But they do not just stop at identification. AJ Nash continues his comments on something called “automated remediation. “ZeroFox can help your agency move to the next level and integrate with systems that can snap into action when a threat is detected.

COVID, fast Internet connections, and small sensors have made the Internet infinitely more dangerous than it was even a few years ago. Understanding external threats can prevent takeovers and attacks.

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After hundreds of interviews with tech innovators I have concluded they are all trying to accomplish the same thing: tell how they can help get the word out that they may have a slice of the solution for federal information technology. One of the best ways to “get the word out” is through a community of interest.

During the interview today, Derek Weeks details his success in forming a community around Development Operations, or DevOps.  In fact, he has published a book detailing that wildly successful endeavor:  Unfair Mindshare LINK

One of the keys is to listen to problems and gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges in remedying complex tech concerns in the federal government. The community is called DevOpsDay https://devopsdays.org/

Derek and a colleague started with an idea to have a couple of hundred developers have access to each other in an informal meeting. It became so popular that it has blossomed into a group of 30,000.

Some key takeaways

·Start with a user-lead experience. There is no use in guessing what topics will be of interest to the community. Reach out personally to dig deep into current issues and concerns.

·Give without expectation. User generated content is closest to the problems than anything from the marketing department. Content from sponsors as well as from members should be shared willingly.

·1,000-hour rule. There is a commitment of at least 1,000 hours a year to accomplish a successful community. This is not a “set it and forget it” initiative. Careful nurturing and growth of the community needs a real effort.

·Localize community relationships. We have seen meetups all over the world. One way to get the word out is to contact like-minded professionals. A problem in Sao Paulo, Brazil could be the exact concern in Kigali, Rwanda.

·Sustaining the relationship is as crucial as beginning it. Derek gives specific tips on maintaining the relationship over the long haul.

The success of community building tells us more about software developers than anything else. Aggressive pitches will be discounted. Generic email blasts are outdated.

Digital natives appreciate authentic experiences. This means that a community leader does not look at a member of a community as a “prospect” but as a “person.”

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The federal government has a myriad of technological challenges: legacy systems, Zero Trust, and even maintaining existing equipment! Most companies who work in that environment solve problems from a traditional office, or, even more comfortably, a home office.

Unfortunately, life at the tactical edge is not that easy.

Today, we dive into the tactical edge network with Sumner Lee, the CEO of a company called Fuse Integration. He started his career at the U.S. Naval Academy and has served in a variety of different geographical environments.

As a result, he has an appreciation for warfighters being in remote and contested environments where communications are critical.

Because today we rely heavily on digital systems for targeting and coordination in the field, any loss of communication can result in grave consequences.

One of the keywords in the interview is the term “resilience.”  In common tech talk, this means having a backup server in another state. When it comes to the tactical edge, it means establishing a system that has backups. For example, if a cable connection goes down, a satellite can provide backup. If someone loses all communications, they still have basic functioning capabilities.

During the interview, Sumner provides examples of how difficult resilience can be in contested environments that are geographically disparate. When a warfighter is under pressure, it is even more important to provide seamless information that is user focused.

When friction is reduced, difficult tasks can be completed in a more efficient manner.

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Cybersecurity threats are like fashion; wait a few years and they come back in style.

The Internet was designed to take a series of digits and resolve them to a website address. This was deemed the Domain Name Service, or DNS. In 1996, we saw the first malicious actor flooding a system with an attack. This was called a Distributed Denial of Service Attack, or DDOS.

Over the years new methods of attack have proliferated and DDOS has taken a back seat. However, the number of endpoints has risen exponentially. It certainly looks like we are in a perfect storm to revive good old-fashioned DDOS.

During today’s interview, Rob San Martin tells the audience that Akamai processes over 11 trillion DNS requests a day and can see trends. According to Akamai’s internal threat intelligence, in 2023, 60% of DDOS attacks had a DNS component.

Looks like we are Back to the Future!

Sean Lyons from Akamai shared an amazing story from last year. A local government was attacked more than 6,000 times. This attack was sustained for over three- and one-half hours.

If you work for a federal agency and are looking for an on-premises solution for this problem, you may want to consider Akamai’s new offering in hybrid DNS infrastructure security called Shield NS53.

Listen to the interview to gain a better understanding of options for controlling DNS issues in your system.

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Appian Corporation is a 25-year-old technology company that focuses on improving process automation for large organizations. Once a year they have an annual conference for developers and partners. They rotate this meeting all over the world, we are lucky enough to have them meet in Washington DC where we have the chance to sit down with one of Appian’s co-founders, Michael Beckley.

During the interview Michael Beckley covered topics like the impact of artificial intelligence on process automation; process automation and acquisition professionals; and how to improve process automation.

Appian Corporation was one of the first companies to embrace a platform that was described as no-code, low-code. The interview will give you a detailed understanding of the benefits of that approach.

After these questions, we pivoted to looking at how Appian Corporation can help the federal audience reach agency goals. Michael detailed concepts like re-using code, compliance, and how Appian uses objects.

During the event, I decided to meet some developers and ask them what questions they would ask if they had the opportunity to sit down with one of the founders of Appian. Let us begin with the questions from the “floor.”  

Minor Mata from Costa Rica. “No questions, we just appreciate all the free training.” He expanded on the concept of not just technology training, but instruction in solving business problems as well. Appian understands that software needs to enable execute in practice.

Noe Miniel from Miami. “Can you improve the speed of the interface?” Appian gives you the tools to speed up the system. That is the purpose of the Appian data fabric.

Jason R. from the federal government. “Can you make the code easier to review?”   Appian incorporates the ability to configure Appian. This can allow senior architects to review the code and not create redundancy. They have template libraries as well as visual tools to allow comparison of code in development.

Listen to the interview to get a bird’s eye view of the progress Appian has made over the years to help federal agencies develop flexible code as well as maintain high compliance standards.

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In connecting with some new listeners, I learned that some have never sold to the federal government and listened to the podcast to see how other companies manage to work with federal agencies in reaching agency goals.

Well, it seems time to pull back with a bonus episode on how to sell technology to the federal government. To accomplish this task, I looked for a person with twenty years of experience in public sector marketing. The logical choice was Brian Chidester. He has worked for many companies in the past two decades and, as a bonus, has a podcast as well. His podcast is called The Government Huddle  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-government-huddle-with-brian-chidester/id1506796636

In a far-ranging discussion, Brian overviews topics like regulations, contract vehicles, and partnerships.

COMMERCIAL VS. FEDERAL

The interview begins by listing how selling to a commercial organization differs from a federal agency. For example, you may not realize that a contracting officer for an agency may be prohibited from discussing the purchase with the end users.

For-profit companies may have some compliance requirements, but none come close to the layer and layer of regulations on a federal site. The federal site cannot just respond to the needs of one segment, like shoe buyers. They serve the public and, as such, must provide access for all citizens equally.

CONTRACT VEHICLES

The federal government is allocated funds in a completely different manner than a commercial organization. For example, an agency like NASA may have Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP). It provides information on products available to contractors.

PARTNERSHIPS

During the discussion, Brian details what can happen. The federal government may have allocated money for a project and mandated a certain amount for small businesses. Your company may be a perfect fit, but you do not qualify to bid on the contract.

It is perfectly feasible to partner with companies like Carahsoft or The Immix Group on a proposed solution. You may have the technical talent, and a company like Carahsoft understands the complex compliance process. It is a win-win proposition.

Brian Chidester ends the interview on a high note. He reinforces the idea that the federal government is actively seeking talent that will solve their problems.

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Not all threats to the United States are discussed in English. That simple concept is well known in the intelligence community; however, making an obvious statement and being able to understand the nuances of a foreign language is a different matter.

Today’s interview is with John Weaver, the Chief Strategy Officer for a company called Babel Street. The company began in 2009 with its name recognizing its ability to understand languages. From this humble beginning, it has grown into a powerhouse for looking at open-sourced information and doing advanced analytics.

During the interview, John Weaver talks about the dilemma many federal agencies are encountering. On the one hand, they have an increased number of sensors and storage where they can amass tremendous amounts of raw data.

The dilemma federal leaders face is how to unlock the insight that matters.

Babel Street focuses on open-sourced information for situational awareness on topics that go beyond linguistics. Of course, they can do a multilingual search, but they have enhanced that basic skill to include social media monitoring, entity resolution, and situational awareness.

Listen to the interview to gain insight on how Babel Street can help you ingest insights promptly.

John Weaver refers to an article called “What is the Risk-Confidence Gap” that can help you understand how to leverage your budget and resources to reduce threats to your agency.

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Artificial Intelligence is at the phase where federal and commercial technology leaders are amazed by novel model architectures. Each one can perform a function like data preprocessing, feature extraction, or prediction. The demonstrations are impressive; today we look at the data behind the dazzle.

Adam Kowalski from proximal has spent years helping organizations follow a data-centric AI approach. During the interview, he expands on having high-quality, relevant data has precedence over any model architecture.

One weakness of generative AI systems is they can be subject to bias. You may have insufficient data. Taking a data-centric approach can eliminate many of the errors we are seeing in AI results.

The results of varying from this precept can be disastrous as well as entertaining. In the commercial world, this can result in millions of dollars of loss. In the federal government, there can be much more grave consequences of ignoring the data.

It is not all serious. Adam Kowalski mentions an entertaining term from the AI community. If you ask a public language model a question about ancient Rome, you may discover a key player was Abraham Lincoln. This is called a “hallucination.”   

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Cheap storage and fast Internet have made data collection cheap and fast. It is no wonder that we have federal agencies that are drowning in data.

Some will argue that the federal government is the largest collector of data in the world.

That may be a fantastic fun fact that will dazzle your neighbors, but how is that data being used to move forward the goals of the agency?

Today, we sat down with Jason Green from Virtru. He brings his considerable experience to bear when he describes how agencies can optimize that data. He provides his thoughts on digital strategy, collaboration, and safeguarding that data.

STRATEGY During the interview, Jason makes a sage observation. He remarks that when looking at the overview of digital transformation strategy, the focus has been on applications and not the data itself. AI will be making increasing inroads around decision-making and serious decisions cannot be derived from dirty data.

COLLOBORAGE – When a data analyst is limited to one data set their conclusions can be biased. The need for collaboration is obvious. The “how” is the tricky part. Jason suggests that more careful attention be paid to tagging data so that some fields can be shared and some not.

SAFEGUARDING – Years ago, data was guarded with hashing techniques. In today’s fast-changing world, mere hashing is not sufficient. Data stores can be injected with poison data; this means continuous monitoring must be stretched into the data stores themselves.

If you would like to learn more about managing data, you may want to attend “DMV Rising” a networking event at Virtru headquarters in Washington DC on September 5, 2024. You will be able to sit in on sessions as well as ask face-to-face questions for subject matter experts.

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In 2021 the federal leaders recognized a problem with citizen experience on federal websites. As a result, Executive Order 14058 was released dedicated to improving citizen services for federal technology.

However, a 2023 McKinsey & Company report states the average score for federal services is only 31%.

Justin Fessler from Yext appears on the Federal Tech Podcast to offer some insights on how to improve the citizen experience, especially as it pertains to search. Everyone has laughed at the misleading results that a search engine gives. Everyone has opinions.

It is one thing when you search for some obscure historical fact, and another when you are looking for a tax ruling.

During the interview, Justin Fessler observes that much of the information citizens require may be sitting in a data store somewhere in the agency. He suggests that generative AI can be applied to these data sets to provide answers more easily and in the context of the user.

One concern that is expressed by everyone is the “black box” nature of generative AI. How can you trust the answer from a faceless system? Justin Fessler provides the answer: citations. In the Yext search platform, stacks of data are searched quickly, and citations are offered for the answer.

Improving citizen experience means documents can be retrieved for important ranging from legal to emergency services.

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