cybersecurity | Government Sales Insider

Time to Start a New Conversation About AI in Government

September 12, 2018 by Lloyd McCoy Jr. Leave a comment

Lloyd McCoy Jr.

By Lloyd McCoy, Marketing Intelligence Manager

Artificial Intelligence is becoming a topic of real interest to federal and SLED governments. Companies that sell storage solutions, automation, big data, security and data mining tools should be encouraged to start a new conversation with their clients and prospects. Here are some of the drivers behind AI in government.

Dramatic cost savings
According to Deloitte, low-investment AI could improve human task speeds up to 20 percent. That would save 96.7 million human hours annually in government. A high investment in AI could save well over one billion human hours per year.

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Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with AI, cybersecurity, DoD, federal government, machine learning, SPAWAR

OTAs Are Heating Up in the DOD

August 15, 2018 by Mark Wisinger 1 Comment

Mark Wisinger_100x135 By Mark Wisinger, senior analyst

Every program manager and acquisition professional in DOD has been leveraging the newest buzzword: OTA, which stands for Other Transaction Authority. OTAs have been in the acquisition arsenal for years, but Congress just recently relaxed rules and restrictions on their use, paving the way for OTAs to be the new hot method for rapid technology insertion and piloting. The Office of the Undersecretary of Acquisition and Sustainment recently has been working on an OTA handbook to help guide DOD acquisition professionals on the do’s and don’ts of this newly revitalized procurement method. It’s no surprise we’re starting to see the use of more and more OTAs.

According to Bloomberg Government, DOD accounted for $2.1B of $2.3B spent through OTAs in 2017. The Army has been a leader in DOD driving most of the OTA usage increases to date, concentrated in the Army Materiel Command, although the Army Cyber Command’s use of OTAs is growing. The Defensive Cyber Operations office, within Army’s PEO EIS is setting up a new OTA vehicle known as C-RAPID, which will be targeting rapid piloting and insertion of defensive cyber tools. Companies that sign on to the consortium will field between 6 and 24 Army technology requests a year for defensive cyber tools.

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Filed under Contracting, Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with Acquisition Reform, Army, C-RAPID, cybersecurity, DIUx, DoD, FAR, Navy, OTA, Other Transactional Authority

OMB: Agencies Need Help With Old Problems

June 7, 2018 by Chris Wiedemann 2 Comments

By Chris Wiedemann, consultant

The cybersecurity challenges facing the government are well understood. Combine a highly federated environment, huge volumes of sensitive, classified or legally-protected data, all running on outdated legacy technology, and you get the government’s current situation: struggling to stay ahead of the latest threats in an increasingly dangerous digital environment.

Federal networks are very popular targets. The government deals with thousands of attacks each year – 35,277 in FY17, according to the most recent FISMA report. Moreover, the consequences of a successful attack are significant. Perhaps no data breach better exemplifies the dangers of lax security than the OPM attack in 2015, which exposed the personally identifiable information of millions of individuals to malicious actors and prompted a round of reports, recommendations and recriminations on the security posture of agency networks – as well as a renewed sense of urgency around security at the agency leadership level.

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Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with cybersecurity, data breach, FISMA, government, OMB, OPM, Situational awareness

New IoT Opportunities to be Found at DoD Facilities

May 11, 2018 by Mark Wisinger Leave a comment

Mark Wisinger_100x135

By Mark Wisinger, senior analyst

Facilities management continues to be the strongest use case for IoT solution sales, especially at the Department of Defense, which maintains thousands of facilities both within and outside the continental U.S. Each individual building contains a wide variety of sensors and devices that need to be actively monitored.

A single building may have systems for fire alarm reporting, closed-circuit TV, HVAC, lighting control, smart grid and physical access control and may include water management and power management devices. The massive amounts of data collected by these systems could help drive better decision making to help the DOD operate more efficiently, protect its assets and personnel, and save money.

Access to HVAC, utility and security system data can provide enormous benefits, but there is inevitable risk too. The DOD is trying to get beyond just worrying about data security compliance and instead wants to focus on managing an acceptable amount of risk.

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Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with Air Force Civil Engineer Center, Army Corps of Engineers, CSPE, cybersecurity, data analytics, data management, Department of Defense, Device control, DoD, DOD Facilities, edge networking, Facilities management, IoT, N-UMCS, NAVFAC, Navy Facilities Engineering Command, PIT-UCS, sensors, Sensors and devices, Situational awareness, smart grid, Technology

Technology Revving Up at Department of Commerce

May 3, 2018 by Tomas O'Keefe Leave a comment

Tom O'Keefe technical financial graph on technology abstract background By Tom O’Keefe, consultant

There’s a lot happening in IT at the Department of Commerce right now, from preparing to count the U.S. population to conducting research on weather.

But, perhaps the most significant new thing is a shift in the mindset of the IT organizations throughout the department as they strive to set standards for the latest and greatest technologies. Communicating with mission owners and agency executives and conveying the value of IT spend is a top priority.

It’s not enough anymore to just take the requirements and deliver an IT system. Agency IT leaders are collaborating more closely than ever with their business and finance peers to argue the value of every dollar spent. I just released a new webinar on these IT trends at Commerce, which you can view here.

But first, let’s take a look at where and how this is happening across Commerce. Read more of this post

Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with Census, cybersecurity, Decennial Census, Department of Commerce, mobile, NOAA, Technology, Trends, USPTO

Artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and beyond

April 20, 2018 by Kevin Shaker Leave a comment

artificial intelligence, government, security By Kevin Shaker, senior analyst

Artificial intelligence has been making headway in the IT sector with a focus on cybersecurity. Spending on AI and machine learning, which helps make AI possible, will grow from $12 billion in 2017 to $57.6 billion by 2021, according to IDC.

And it’s starting to get the attention of federal, state and local government IT personnel who see it as a way to increase and optimize automation for enhanced judgment and cost reduction.

The largest opportunity for AI is cybersecurity. Government agencies spend significant resources and people hours adapting to cyber threats while hacker technology becomes even more persistent and evolving. This is the wild west with cybersecurity and the trick is to stay one step ahead of malware, spyware and viruses that aim to corrupt and compromise sensitive processes and data.

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Filed under Market Intelligence Tagged with artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, Department of Defense, Internet of Things, Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, machine learning

What you need to know about selling cyber

April 3, 2018 by Amanda Stone Leave a comment

By Amanda Stone, cybersecurity channel development representative

As cybersecurity salespeople, we never lack reminders that the cyber landscape is a truly unsettling place. Each new headline-stealing breach exposes another example of how vulnerable we are. Feeding the exponential growth of cybersecurity threats are the number of avenues hackers can use to obtain our consumer data, the number of rewards for its theft and the relative lack of deterrents.

I recently had the privilege of chatting with Faraz Siraj, regional vice president of Americas’ Channels, Distribution and Alliances for RSA Security, about best practices for cyber sales reps working for various VARs and distributors.

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