Ep. 275 Securing Federal Data: The Evolution from Zero Trust to Least Permissive Trust
Release Date: 10/16/2025
Ep. 299 Wipers, Rogue AI, and Resilience: How Federal Agencies Can Respond and Recover from Attacks in 2026
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Everyone reading this has had minor delays at the airport. It is remarkable that more problems have not developed. Look at Chicago O’Hare International Airport—it has 857,392 takeoffs and landings in a year. Each one has passengers, and most have luggage. The opportunities for problems are overwhelming. Now add an increasing number of sensors and interlaced networks, and you have an attack surface of biblical proportions. All an adversary needs is one single point of vulnerability to attack a system. Think what could happen if an airport network were disabled by a ransomware attack. ...
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Ep. 298 Resilience by Design: Federal Cyber Predictions, AI-Driven Threats, and Immutable Backups with Rubrik
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Technology is changing so fast that it is impossible to predict the next twelve days. Despite that, we have asked Travis Rosiek, Public Sector CTO at Rubrik, to gaze into his crystal ball and make some predictions for the next twelve months. The good news is that Rosiek sees a shift from intellectual property theft to disruptive attacks on critical infrastructure. The bad news is that Rosiek thinks attacks are increasing to the point that an event will light a fire under the current cybersecurity plans. During the interview, the concept of Zero Trust was unpacked. The idea is that federal...
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Ep. 297 Seeing the Invisible: Using AI to Detect Threats in Encrypted Federal Networks
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
It is always tricky to compare commercial networking challenges with those faced by federal leaders. For example, the military and intelligence agencies require traffic encryption. How can an organization detect threats while observing this traffic? Today, we discuss Vectra AI's network threat detection capabilities with Wes Nagel, DoD sales manager, and Gage Cowger, a security engineer. With technology from Vectra AI, network traffic can be analyzed for timing, size, direction, and protocol use. These can give behavioral patterns for network visibility without worrying about encryption. ...
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Ep. 296 Securing the Federal Software Supply Chain: Why SBOMs aren’t enough
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
One of the biggest trends in software development over the past 10 years is the shift from writing code to “assembling” code from off-the-shelf components. During today’s interview with Javed Hasan from Lineaje, we learned that 70% of that pre-assembled code is open source. In other words, an anonymous person in some countries modified software instructions. This casual approach may be fine for small businesses, but an organization like the federal government must be highly cautious. Hasan describes how his company was one of the first to work with the federal government to set...
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Ep. 295 AWS leadership
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
In the past 10 years, Amazon Web Services has gone from a niche player in the federal government to being responsible for billions in sales. One key aspect of this is how Amazon integrates leadership with innovation to address complex federal requirements. Today, we sit down with Andrew Christian to get an overview of concepts like customer obsession, working backwards, and the sixteen leadership principles that AWS implements to accomplish that drastic growth. ONE Customer-focus In the commercial marketplace, the concept of being “customer-focused” is certainly not breaking news....
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Ep. 294 From Defense to Offense: Proactive Strategies to Protect Federal Data
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
One famous cartoon featured two vultures sitting on a fence; one turned to the other and said, “I am sick of waiting, let’s kill something.” When it comes to preventing cyberattacks, the federal government is well known for a defensive approach. They have security systems, air gap systems, and even a zero-trust approach. This defensive approach is essential but may not give the federal government a complete view of how to protect data. Today, we sat down with Chris Jones, Nightwing's Chief Technical Officer. He outlines some of the characteristics of a concept called “offense...
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Ep. 293 Predictions for 2026 from Gitlab
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Today, we have an experienced tech veteran, Bob Stevens from GitLab, offering insights on how he sees the federal government overcoming three main technology challenges in 2026. Challenge ONE: Software improvement on scale. Stevens observed that everyone has seen AI's ability to review code. It has passed the basic phase, and now, in 2026, it cannot only review code but also identify security vulnerabilities, ensure compliance, and even generate documentation. This means that older,...
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Ep. 292 From Detection to Prevention: Using Technology to Reduce Fraud in Federal Programs
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
(We recorded this interview at Monk’s BBQ in lovely downtown Purcellville, VA) Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Defrauding the federal government is like the weather; everyone wants to complain, but nobody can do anything about it. For example, a joint DOL-SBA report from December 2024 revealed $2.3 billion in potentially fraudulent payments. Today, we sat down with Jeff Gallimore from Excella, where he will diagnose the problem of federal waste, fraud, and abuse. From there, he presents a solution that has already saved millions of...
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Ep. 291 Compliance Without the Bottleneck: Zero Trust in Federal Clouds
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? When cloud computing was introduced, it was quite a simple concept: leverage other people’s hardware to scale easily. Not too much to manage. However, today’s cloud world has metastasized. Today, federal leaders live in a world of on-prem, multiple clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, and even sovereign clouds. Complications arise when they are burdened with compliance requirements and staff reductions. Today, we sat down with Ryan McArthur from Zscaler to discuss how to effectively manage a cloud...
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Ep. 290 AI + Zero Trust: The New Line of Defense for Federal Data
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? We are at the point where AI is almost expected in any technology offering. Today, we sat down with John Kindervag from Illumio to learn how AI can be applied to the world of federal Zero Trust. Some have characterized today’s current cybersecurity situation as an arms race; some call it a whack-a-mole game. An innovative technology, such as AI, becomes popularized, and adversaries use it to improve attacks. As a result, the defenders of data must bolster their response, and they, in turn, use AI to...
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Sometimes, the plow must go deeper. Current approaches to Zeer Trust implementation can leave gaps in security. Today, we sat down with Akamai’s Mike Colson to discuss the concept of combining Identity Credential Access Management with Least Permissive Trust.
Setting the stage, Mike Colson details some of the challenges in the varying kinds of Zero Trust that are being applied in the Federal Government.
The standard way of implementing ICM can result in assigning more resources than necessary, leading to permission creep and inflexible permission.
Over provisioning: The amount of data being created is almost impossible to manage. A person may be given access to a data set they are not permitted to see. A “just in time” permission structure would help avoid that situation.
Stale: Just because a person has access to a data set on a Tuesday does not mean he has access on a Wednesday. People can leave the workforce, be reassigned, or change roles. Access must be constantly updated.
Static: Ron Popiel made the phrase, “Set it and forget it,” memorable. Unfortunately, this approach can lead to a permission structure that may limit access to key data. This may be considered under-provisioning, potentially leading to time delays in obtaining key information.
Colson took the listeners through several iterations of access control, including Role-Based Access Control and Attribute-Based Access Control. On top of these old favorites, Colson discussed what may be called Context-Based Access Control, or what he calls Least Permissive Trust.
Least permissive trust is a concept Colson outlined, which uses user behavior, device health, and contextual factors to grant permission dynamically.
The conclusion is simple: not all Zero Trust is created equal.