Ep. 280 How Zero Trust Automation Helps Federal Agencies do More with Less
Release Date: 11/06/2025
Ep 318 Securing Millions of Federal Endpoints in the AI Era
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? There is a popular podcast in the Washington, D.C. area called “Feds at the Edge.” The title alone acknowledges the importance of edge devices for the sprawling federal government. Today, we sat down with Tommy Gardner from HP to discuss the challenges of securing millions of endpoints in the federal government, including legacy systems and operational technology (OT). When it comes to OT, Gardner makes a shocking observation: if you take an endpoint, like a sensor in a boiler, and it gets...
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Ep 317 Mission-Driven AI Modernization in Federal Health Systems
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? The Veterans Administration is a system with nine million enrolled veterans across 1,300 facilities. In a system like that, downtime is not an option. Today, we look at how a company successfully reduced documentation time, increasing adoption in one part of this massive system. We sat down with Nilanjan Sengupta from Thoughtworks to learn which methods proved successful. He began by stating the focus must not be on bits and bytes, but on mission outcomes. For example, for years, clinicians spent 10–20...
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Ep. 316 AI Supply Chain Risks Every Federal Leader Must Know
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? Interest in technology comes in waves. Back in 2022, managing the supply chain became number one on the list of priorities for federal technology leaders. Since then, we have seen a huge cycle of AI dominating the federal government's attention span. This shift in focus may be causing you to overlook other critical supply chain concerns. Today, we sat down with Bob Kolasky from Exiger. His company got its start by helping the Department of Justice monitor HSBC, a large financial management company. That led...
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Ep. 315 Behavioral AI Stops Advanced Federal Phishing Attacks
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? Sending deceptive email has been around for decades. It has gone from a Nigerian prince asking for financial assistance to 10,000 people. Today, phishing isn’t ‘spray and pray’ anymore—AI is creating hyper-personalized emails that look exactly like someone you trust. Today, we sat down with Patricia Titus from Abnormal AI to learn how the correct response to an enhanced AI phishing attack. Some may shock you. Voices are being emulated, hyper personalized threats are being developed, and...
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Ep 314 Federal API Security Risks Rise with Shadow IT Threat
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
If you go to Google Trends and type in API threats, you get a classic hockey stick. This is probably caused by the proliferation of connectors to cloud solutions paired with the popularity of AI. Today, we sat down with Brian Dennis from Akamai to talk about the problem this can present to federal systems. He begins by telling the audience that API attacks have increased by over 1,200 percent, reflecting the Google data. The shock is that many organizations, federal included, do not even know how many API’s they actually have. There may be APIs that were designed in earlier systems; there...
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Agentic AI Reshapes Federal Government Workflows Now
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
This is an interview at the Salesforce Agentforce World Tour in Washington, D.C., held on March 29, 2026, at the Washington Convention Center. Mia Jordan was the federal CIO twice and brings a unique view to the discussion of challenges and solutions around federal technology. She sat down with Federal Tech Podcast at the Salesforce Agentforce World Tour to give her thoughts on AI and innovation in the federal government. Jordan notes the federal government has used AI for a decade, but now faces pressure to move rapidly from concept to production. Although there is a sense of urgency from...
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Agentic AI Transforms Federal Mission at Scale
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Today, we sat down with Paul Tatum, Executive Vice President, Global Public Sector at Salesforce, to hear how Salesforce can help federal agencies reach ambitious goals with Agentic AI. By now, everyone has played around with AI, and possibly some agents. Viewed independently, they can dazzle. Unfortunately, the federal government expects action based on data. If you isolate Agentic AI, you can fall into the trap of lacking the ability to scale, ensure security, and maintain control. In those several weeks, notable technology leaders have jumped headfirst into some agentic offerings from...
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Federal HR Modernization: Mapping Chaos to Clarity
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
Today, we sat down with Charles Fiery from Excella to discuss the complexities of improving federal agency processes. He shared insights on the challenges of process discovery, change management, and data transformation. It is always difficult to assess a large enterprise, whether public or private, to determine how to improve complex processes. One approach is to look at duplicative systems; the federal government provides a notable example. The federal government has evolved into new agencies over the years. Because of technical and legal challenges, they have mostly remained siloed. As a...
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Fast Content Delivery and Security in Federal IT
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
In the 1990’s, the World Wide Web was so popular that it was facetiously called the Worldwide Wait. Centralized servers handled a small workload but bogged down as volumes increased. As a result, Content Delivery Services sprang up to distribute the workload worldwide. By 2001, large news organizations could manage unpredictable increases in traffic. The past decade saw a drastic increase in traffic and threats to it. During the interview, Omeed Nosarti describes how companies like Fastly began offering proprietary methods to deliver content faster. Nasrati highlights Fastly's proprietary...
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Real-Time AI Intelligence and the New Federal Cyber Threat Landscape
Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
In 2026, we are seeing an increase in cyberattacks targeting defense contractors and defense production. Today, we met with Tim Miller, Field CTO at Dataminr, who explained how the company is helping the federal government address this growing threat. Traditionally, cyber threats could be classified as “Zero Day.” Essentially, this meant an attack targeting a software or hardware vulnerability that was unknown to the public. They were effective because no security patch existed, and they could bypass defenses. AI has compressed this 24-hour window to minutes. If your opponent is...
info_outlineEp. 281 How Zero Trust Automation Helps Federal Agencies do More with Less
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/
Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com
As this interview was recorded, the federal government was in the middle of a shutdown. Hundreds of pundits have given interviews about the politics of the situation; very few have looked at the impact on cybersecurity during a phase of workforce reduction.
Today, we sat down with Gary Barlet, the Public Sector CTO at Illumio, to see whether Zero Trust can help the federal government bridge this short personnel gap.
Barlet begins by giving an overview of Zero Trust and automation. Rather than having human beings vet entry into federal systems, the concept is to use an automated process that reviews credentials and decides on permission.
Barlet emphasizes the importance of Zero Trust in automating security tasks and maintaining operational resilience, especially with reduced staff.
He continues to mention several other benefits of Zero Trust in a federal environment.
Compliance: A well-thought-out Zero Trust architecture will enable managers to collect data to demonstrate policy enforcement.
Legacy: One can effectively take existing systems and “ring fence” them off. This approach creates hundreds and hundreds of rings of defense.
Design: During the interview, Gary recommends that you have a handle on the real traffic to reduce complexity. That way, when policies change, the rules can adapt to the environment.
Maturity Level: Although CISA has a maturity level for Zero Trust. Barlet distills down some of the requirements for which efforts can be applied to sensitive systems. He suggests focusing on security, not necessarily on a grade.
Additionally, he addresses the challenges of managing complex, hybrid environments and the emergence of shadow AI models, stressing the need for robust policies and controls.