"We are making progress. This really is not just about technology. This is about changing our processes changing our approach to delivering and operating technology to IT systems and our cyber mechanical warfare systems as we move forward," said Robert Vietmeyer, DoD Director for Cloud and Software Modernization. 

For the second year in a row, Gartner named IBM a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for 2021 Cloud Database Management Systems based on its Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. With emergence of a single cloud DBMS market, We believe our portfolio of feature-rich, enterprise-tested offerings, bold acquisitions, and partnerships enable our clients to address the unique needs of their business, respond to the growing volume, velocity and variety of today’s data and drive more accurate data driven decisions.

This week's roundup of the latest news and insights gathered from IBM's Government Research Institute thought leaders:

As organizations adapt to hybrid work and more and more cloud services are deployed, new service entities that collaborate and exchange data without human interaction, such as virtual machines and containers, are proliferating. The growth of these service accounts and identities and their increasing volumes of permissions, privileges, and entitlements expose organizations to new attack vectors. 

Threat Intelligence Report Shows Massive Uptick in DDoS Attacks

NETSCOUT recently released its semi-annual Threat Intelligence Report with deep insights into the notably distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and cyber activity during the second half of 2021. The report contains troves of valuable information about the ongoing threat posed to organizations across the public and private sectors, including government agencies and other public sector organizations.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is taking major steps to boost cloud performance, with the promise of a tangible, positive impact on military missions throughout the world. Specifically, the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract is replacing the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) initiative, which was intended to establish enterprise-class cloud capabilities for the military community.

On the Tech Transforms podcast, sponsored by Dynatrace, we have talked to some of the most prominent influencers shaping critical government technology decisions. From supply chain to machine learning, this podcast explores the way technology advancement intersects with human needs.

In March 2022, we sat down with these government technology visionaries:

The Ukraine-Russia conflict began when the Russian military invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Yet the cybersecurity and cyber warfare elements of this conflict began before initial combat action. Ukraine was hit with numerous cyberattacks against its government and banking systems in the lead-up to the conflict, with experts blaming Russia for the cyberattacks. And within the first 48 hours, multiple U.S. agencies noted that cyberattacks from suspected hackers in Russia increased by over 800%.

"Zero Trust is a cybersecurity strategy and framework that embeds IT security mechanisms throughout an architecture that generate metadata used to secure, manage, and monitor every device user, application, and network transaction at the perimeter and within every network enclave."

From the Department of Defense (DoD) Zero Trust Reference Architecture v1.0

There has been an increased focus among U.S. government agencies on adapting to modern IT environments and enhancing cybersecurity solutions. This increased focus on security government networks, data, and critical infrastructure is a result of ongoing digital transformation initiatives that are resulting in more mission-critical connected systems and more data for agencies to secure. It’s also a result of the increased number of cyberattacks and more sophisticated cyber-criminals that are targeting our nation’s networks.