Article written by Jim Hansen, VP of Products, Security, SolarWinds

Earlier this year, the Department of Defense (DoD) released a policy memo stating that DoD personnel—as well as contractors and visitors to DoD facilities—may no longer carry mobile devices in areas specifically designated for “processing, handling, or discussion of classified information.”

Federal IT pros understand the challenge agencies face in trying to manage an ever-growing, increasingly complex network environment. While federal IT networks are becoming more distributed—with more devices being added all the time—the demand for security and availability is increasing as well. Yes, at some point new technologies may make networking easier and more secure; until that point, however, growing pains seem to be getting worse.

2018 marks the 15^th year of the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a government/industry effort – observed every October – that works to ensure every American has the resources they need to “be safer and more secure online” and educating everyone about the roles they play in helping to safeguard the internet.

Digital twins may sound like the stuff of science fiction. Yet, digital twin technology is one of the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2018, according to research firm Gartner, Inc. Gartner® recently announced 48% of surveyed organizations working with the Internet of Things (IoT) say they are already using, or plan to use, digital twins in 2018. Gartner’s survey also indicated that adoption of digital twin technology is expected to triple by 2022.

Any federal IT pro can tell you that analyzing log files is something they’ve been doing for years. That said, as applications get more complex, performance becomes more important and security issues increase. Log analytics are fast becoming a critical component of an agency’s monitoring and management infrastructure.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is coming. Contrary to the stuff of science fiction, however, AI has the potential to have a positive impact within the federal IT community. The adoption of AI will likely be the result of the adoption of hybrid and cloud IT computing.

Government networks are some of the largest in the world. Ensuring these mission-critical infrastructures are optimized for automation and performance—particularly in today’s increasingly complex hybrid IT environments—is quite a tall order.

How do federal IT pros ensure the high availability required? How do they connect faults to performance, and make direct connections between networks, systems, and applications within large, hybrid environments?

Every federal IT pro understands the importance of network monitoring, systems management, database performance monitoring, and other essential functions. The IT infrastructure must be working optimally to ensure overall performance.

What about application performance?

Movies and TV would have us believe that data breaches are long, hard-fought battles between the good guy and the bad guy—and the bad guy wins. That could not be further from reality. Hackers are opportunistic. They want to spend as little time as possible getting into the system, getting what they need, getting out, and exploiting it as fast as possible.