Technically Speaking

It doesn’t matter whether you work in the federal, state or local government, rolling out any new software to your workforce can be a challenge. This is especially true of CAD software. Oftentimes, a department may upgrade from AutoCAD to a discipline-specific tool like AutoCAD Civil 3D or Revit, or depart radically from an old way of doing things with new software. Team leads or CAD managers face several challenges. Standards must be reviewed and modified, staff must be trained, trial projects must be identified, and user/management expectations met.

Targeted campaigns by malicious actors have become commonplace. As recent breaches show, these threat actors can stay hidden on agency networks for long periods of time, assessing your systems and looking for information to exfiltrate. We call them the enemy with no face.

Intel agencies and other government organizations that deal with secret-level datasets, now have access to a “secret” cloud data center region – the AWS Secret Region. With the launch of this region, DLT partner, AWS becomes the first and only commercial cloud provider to offer regions to serve government workloads across the full range of data classifications, including Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret.

Defending against insider threats is a top priority for the U.S. government. When surveyed by MeriTalk, 85% of federal cybersecurity professionals say their agency is more focused on combating insider threats in 2017 than they were just a year ago.

When you think of learning or professional development in the workplace, what thoughts spring to mind? Enduring another lunch and learn where a colleague shares their insights? Struggling to stay awake through another PowerPoint? That kind of learning can be drudgery, even if it does come with a free lunch. But it doesn’t have to be that way. As Natalie Portman said: “I don’t love studying. I hate studying. I like learning. Learning is beautiful.” The 70:20:10 Rule

Take your cloud data, database data, HR data, financial data, throw it in a blender and what have you got? Data soup! It may as well be. You have all the right ingredients, but no recipe for pulling it all together. As we accumulate more data, across disparate data sources, the challenge for today’s government data analyst are multiple: