Technically Speaking

Federal Pain Points and IT Requirements The latest Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) Scorecard, released in December 2021, highlights how federal agencies are faring across several areas related to IT modernization. The full breakdown from the scorecard is available here. These scorecards are useful to identify where government agencies are struggling and where they are doing well. Consequently, technology vendors and channel partners can use them as a guide for identifying what solutions their customers need.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurned greater demand for health information technology (IT) by demonstrating the importance of having robust medical research, health surveillance and healthcare systems capable of rapidly responding to new and developing situations, something which requires strong IT investment in big data, cybersecurity and cloud. In addition, both the pandemic and emerging technologies have led to numerous changes within the healthcare industry, such as telehealth expansion and increased use of wearables, which necessitate robust health IT solutions.

Kubernetes was originally designed to support workload consolidation in a single cluster. However, there are many problem scenarios that require a multi-cluster approach to optimize performance and results. These can include workloads across regions, limiting outage blast radius, compliance issues, hard multitenancy, security, and specialized solutions.

Zero Trust is a concept gaining significant attention across the federal landscape. The idea isn’t new, and yet the notion of "never trust, always verify" is appearing more and more in memos, solicitations and other federal government announcements. For example, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released memo M-22-09, "Moving the U.S. Government Toward Zero Trust Cybersecurity Principles," in late January 2022.

In view of current events, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has noted the increased likelihood of a cybersecurity breach. Their recommendations, listed below, speak mainly to the basics of cybersecurity:  foundational practices and technology that protect every enterprise, in both the public and private sector. Below are the key elements (full details are here Shields Up | CISA):

In a Department of Defense (DoD) Town Hall held on February 10, led by David McKeown, DoD’s Senior Information Security Officer and Deputy CISO, we heard some news about CMMC. Defense contractors holding Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) will need a third-party assessment to obtain certification.