Federal Tech Podcast: for innovators, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who want to increase reach and improve brand awareness
The federal government spends $90 billion on technology every year. If you are a tech innovator and want to expand your share of the market, this is the podcast for you to find new opportunities for growth. Every week, Federal Tech Podcast sits down with successful innovators who have solved complex computer system problems for federal agencies. They cover topics like Artificial Intelligence, Zero Trust, and the Hybrid Cloud. You can listen to the technical issues that concern federal agencies to see if you company’s capabilities can fit. The moderator, John Gilroy, is an award-winning lecturer at Georgetown University and has recorded over 1,000 interviews. His interviews are humorous and entertaining despite handing a serious topic. The podcast answers questions like . . . How can software companies work with the federal government? What are federal business opportunities? Who are the cloud providers who work with the federal government? Should I partner with a federal technology contractor? What is a federal reseller? Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com
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Ep 210 Software Development and the Shift Left
01/21/2025
Ep 210 Software Development and the Shift Left
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? “Efficiency” seems like the new buzzword for federal technology in the next few years. When writing software sense, efficiency can mean writing code once and moving on to regular maintenance. However, we see security initiatives being mandated that cause developers to go back to previous stable systems and add code alterations to comply with new cyber threats. Even beginner efficiency experts will tell you the time and cost of operating in this manner can be expensive. Further, recording can add new bugs and risks, making the system more complex. Federal technology leaders from CISA have not lost sight of this. They have a “Secure by Design” initiative that addresses this issue. As in many tech concerns, the concern is how to accomplish this noble task. Today, we sit down with Nathan Jones from Sonar. He offers a solution that seeks to “shift left” the whole concept of security by design. His company provides systems that can review code to ensure its compliance. Further, he expands on an approach that can collaborate with developers while they write code. Nathan Jones gives listeners details about how Sonar’s Qube can be deployed on a server, in the cloud, or with IDE. The benefits are ample: lower maintenance, minimizing risk, and allowing a focus on innovation rather than rewriting code.
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Ep. 209 AI & and Proposal Development in 2025
01/15/2025
Ep. 209 AI & and Proposal Development in 2025
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? People are getting comfortable with Generative AI and applying it to many business areas. This widespread adoption shows many of the weaknesses of individuals misusing technology. It is one thing to settle a baseball statistics argument with GenAI; another complete application when competing for a million-dollar federal contract that includes management of sensitive information. These include biased outputs, lack of creativity, and misinformation, to name a few. Today, we offer a solution. Vishwas Lele is the co-founder and CEO of pWin.ai. He has decades of experience in federal contracts and a sophisticated understanding of applied Artificial Intelligence. He has seen the reliance on cliches and superficial language that can result in the inappropriate application of AI for proposal writing. His solution is to partner with Shipley Associates, a proposal writing company that has been in business for fifty years and has technology that can safely use AI. The result: pWin.ai. If you would like a more detailed explanation, consider attending a webinar on January 22, 2025
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Ep 208 Innovation with OSCAL, Federal Cloud, and Compliance
01/13/2025
Ep 208 Innovation with OSCAL, Federal Cloud, and Compliance
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Everyone reading this knows that April 15 is the dreaded day that one must pay federal income taxes. Big business has hordes of tax accountants and lawyers who do tax planning to accommodate federal deadlines. Sometimes, the deadline could be better known. Are you familiar with the OMB’s M-24-15? This will require companies to submit compliance information in a machine-readable format. Today, we sat down with Valinder Mangat from DRTConfidence. Valinder describes technology, deadlines, and approaches your company can use to comply. This interview will serve as a warning about an immense deadline that is crucial if you work with the federal government and cloud service providers. Essentially, NIST recognized that compliance done manually was time-consuming and subject to error. Back in 2016, they suggested OSCAL to streamline compliance. In addition to speeding things up, OSCAL allows for reuse without repetitive assessments. Whether you realize it or not, by the end of 2025, each federal contractor will be expected to provide compliance information in the OSCAL format, which stands for Open Security Controls Assessment Language. The other side of the coin is important to discuss as well. If you are an agency dealing with cloud compliance, you will be expected to be able to ingest compliance data in the OSCAL format.
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Ep 207 Federal Data, Fast Access, Security
01/09/2025
Ep 207 Federal Data, Fast Access, Security
Ep 206 Federal Data, Fast Access, Security Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? When it comes to technology, the founders of VAST Data can be described as “prescient.” In 2015, they looked at the problem of data management from a unique perspective. They did not want to call their company VAST “storage” but VAST “Data” because the problem they tried to solve was not the amount of storage but how to get instant and fast access to that data. The wave they rode was a combination of nVidia investing in graphic processing units and flash storage becoming more affordable. The result: VAST Data has grown to be valued at over nine billion dollars. During the interview, Randy Hayes details the value proposition of this innovation for federal projects. Their first customer was NIH, and they have built on that reputation ever since. Randy Hayes mentions that the current Zero Trust initiative begins with identification. Rapid, accurate authentication rests on fast access to data. Further, we have seen a resurgence in many organizations' migration from the cloud to on-prem solutions, mostly due to rising cloud costs and data sovereignty issues. VAST Data can provide efficient and quick ways to manage this data transfer. Innovation, dropping chip set prices, and understanding federal problems all allow VAST Data to assist federal agencies in accomplishing ambitious goals. If you want to learn more, VAST Data will attend the Nvidia GTC conference on March 17th in San Jose, California.
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Ep 206 An Argument for Enterprise Design
01/02/2025
Ep 206 An Argument for Enterprise Design
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Complex environments exist in commercial organizations and the federal government. In a typical fashion, humans resist change until an incident force restructuring. In this case, the change of design will be costly. During today’s interview, Nick Pesce says that today’s systems are burdened to such an extent that structural change should start now, when it is easy and less expensive, and then wait for an incident that will cause change. Both guests, Nick Pesce and Don Lamb, have experience in federal government change management. They work for the well-respected MITRE, home of the ATT&CK framework. As a result, they can look at a systemic problem and see the solution. Their report, Recommendations for Creating Cross-Agency Enterprise Design Specifications, details ways to make this change. They also detail user stories and use cases and how to manage requirements and proofs of concept. Their argument goes that when combined with understanding mission objectives, the existing information silos in the federal government can be overcome.
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Ep 205 AI = Data + Compute + Algorithm
12/23/2024
Ep 205 AI = Data + Compute + Algorithm
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Cybersecurity professionals like to talk about data “at rest” and data “in transit.” They never mention how exactly this concept of “in transit” takes place. Once upon a time, in a data center far, far away, one could take a database and move it easily. Kind of like taking a suitcase in your car and driving across town. Today, federal agencies are deluged with so much data, is it more like dragging your entire house across town? Moving data today involves concepts like data tiring. This is an approach where data is taken to a third place and transferred from there. Due to limitations of latency, network bandwidth, and compliance concerns, this is a process that can take way more time than can be imagined. You may have some highly compensated data scientists waiting days for a complete transfer. Let us take another scenario. What if your agency has some data stored in a specific cloud provider? It may be discovered that charges were higher than expected and the data need to be returned to the on prem environment. If not done properly, this transition can be fraught with issues. Further, many federal agencies are sitting a veritable treasure trove of data, both structured and unstructured. These could be images, text, email, or video. Pure Storage offers ways to derive value from a wide variety of unstructured data. structured and unstructured data. These could be images, text, email, or video. Pure Storage offers ways to derive value from various unstructured data.
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Ep 204 Understanding of the Landscape of Your Network
12/19/2024
Ep 204 Understanding of the Landscape of Your Network
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? We all know that in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. A couple of years later, a map maker named Americo Vespucci made quite a splash with a new map. This has a direct parallel with today’s information technology. Columbus really did not “discover” anything—it was there all along. When you look at an enterprise system, be it a bank in Houston or a federal agency, you may have only a hint of what is on your network. Who knows what kind of “ghost IT” has been added to your system? It could be a deliberate attempt by an employee to circumvent the compliance process; it could be a malicious actor who has entered your system. Today, we sit down with Tom Guarente from Armis, the “Asset Intelligence Company.” Armis can take a detailed look at your network and provide you with actionable information. On-premises networks, endpoints, data centers, cloud, and hybrid cloud = a wide range of potential presences on your network. During the interview, Tom Guarente emphasized the importance of putting this information in proper perspective. When an asset is identified, its relationship to other assets and its context is just about as important as the ability to detect it at all. Armis can assist federal agencies with understanding relationships and vulnerabilities they did not even know they had.
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Ep 203 Dangers that Lurk inside Your Phone
12/17/2024
Ep 203 Dangers that Lurk inside Your Phone
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? We have all heard that the phones we carry around have more computing power than was used in the Apollo moon mission. Breaking news: these powerful devices in our pockets are vulnerable to attacks of which we cannot dream. We can just pick up our phones and read the headlines. Brian Krebs reports federal charges against SMS attacks, Salt Typhoon getting into our phone systems, even the FBI telling us to use encryption on our phones. Today, we sat down with Jim Coyle from Lookout to unpack the concept of mobile threats. He begins with some startling facts. For example, Jim Coyle states that over half the movable devices in a recent study did not have an up-to-date operating system. One simple proof-of-concept is with a malicious URL. On a desktop, one can hoover over a URL to see where it is taking you; a credible URL will be clicked on a phone device with no questions asked. There are other entries as well. For example, what happens when a company with a legitimate app gets bought out by a malicious actor? It is possible for them to have an open door to your phone. The good news – a lot of mobile malwares will not survive a reboot. The lesson: every night plug in your phone, turn it off and on.
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Ep 202 Innovation in Handling Complexities of AI
12/12/2024
Ep 202 Innovation in Handling Complexities of AI
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Malicious actors are taking advantage of AI and the federal government. As a result, we are in a strange Wack-a-Mole game in which applying AI for defense has become so complex that each application seems to require specific skill sets. Today, we sit down with two leaders of NRLabs to discuss their unique approach to applied AI. NRLabs leverages the founders' diverse aerospace engineering and cybersecurity backgrounds to provide innovative solutions, including penetration testing and red team activities. Individuals can become limited in understanding these nuances. As a result, NRLabs has formed a method called the Cyber Collab, where they meet regularly to offer individual perspectives and applications. Because of this, they continue research and testing on using localized adversarial AI models to identify vulnerabilities in cloud-based AI platforms. During the interview, Jon David details exploring opportunities to partner with organizations like CISA's Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) to enhance collaboration and information sharing on critical infrastructure security.
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Ep 201 Misdirection, feints, trojan horses
12/10/2024
Ep 201 Misdirection, feints, trojan horses
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? In Frank Herbert’s classic Dune, Paul Atreides's martial arts instructor discusses knife fighting and a “feint within a feint.” Today, we apply for this martial art tactic in federal information technology. Malicious actors are flooding networks with false attacks, which are, in essence, feints with knives. Digital technology can multiply this activity, or noise, to such an extent that the real attack may be missed. The question is: How can we differentiate between the noise and the actual attack? Today, we have Chris Howard and Zach Vaugh, two experts from Vectra AI. They explain Vectra AI's approach to understanding threat attack intelligence. For the past fourteen years, Vectra AI has focused on this noise-to-signal ratio, garnering some thirty-five patents in this endeavor. They understand the nuances of code morphing, lateral movement, and something curiously called “living off the land.” As a result, they alert a manager to suspicious activity; leaders can be assured they are not dealing with a false alarm. This innovation is important today because Zero Trust is being implemented today. The concept is to allow the right person to have the right data at the right time. How do you know the data has not been injected with malicious code?
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Ep. 200 Data Usage Across Silos and Boundaries
12/05/2024
Ep. 200 Data Usage Across Silos and Boundaries
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? In 1967 the movie Cool Hand Luke gave us this famous quote, “what we have here is a failure to communicate.” Surprisingly, this adage may apply to federal technology as well. If a federal leader allows secure information to be communicated, they can get fired. If they do not allow enough access to appropriate information, decisions can go sideways. The federal government is being bombarded with data, some important, some trivial. The challenge is to get life-and-death information into the hands of decision makers. So, we have massive data stores and some of them reside in the intelligence community. During the interview, Dr. Williams offers an innovation that allows users to access multiple sources as if it were a single database. Further, the data can be protected to allow the correct users the specific amount of data permitted. The beneficiary of this method of protecting data at rest is Artificial Intelligence. The data that if fed into AI model can be leveraged and protected at the same time.
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Ep. 178 Protecting Critical Infrastructure
12/04/2024
Ep. 178 Protecting Critical Infrastructure
While everybody is focusing on Artificial Intelligence, malicious actors are going after the soft underbelly of modern technology: operational technology, or OT. Today, we take a look at the increasing threat of cyber-attacks on operational technology (OT) systems, which are often not built with security in mind. Operational Technology is represented by control systems, logic controllers, and other end points found in critical infrastructure like water and systems that generate energy, like oil, natural gas and even nuclear. Today’s experts share ideas on how to mitigate risk through. Collaboration: Throughout the federal government communities are being formed that seek to share information on OT threats. For example, CISA has a Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative that serves as a clearing house for communication between industry and the federal government. Continuous monitoring: Marty Edwards works on several federal committees to try to establish data formats that would allow for interoperability to monitor attacks and update existing operational technology. Proactive measures: Jonathan Feibus from the NRC shares that 90% of the systems he monitors are focused on Information Technology. Vendors seeking solutions to this problem should look at extending methodologies built for IT into the realm of OT. The discussion ended with a discussion of the integration of IT and OT security, the role of AI in enhancing security, and the need for comprehensive asset inventories and risk assessments.
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Ep 199 Managing Mobile Security
12/03/2024
Ep 199 Managing Mobile Security
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Using a phone to read or communicate has become so standard that church people are expected to read scripture with their phones. Using mobile devices to transmit secure information. Traditionally, secure communication was based on desktop systems; today, we need to pivot and learn how to apply mobile device management to leverage the cloud to provide safe and secure communications through mobile devices. Our guest today, Harold Smith, has spent the last twenty years gaining a deep understanding of secure communications and applying that understanding to developing a trusted mobile development platform. During the interview, you will be bombarded with acronyms like NIAC (National Information Assurance Partnership), MATTER (Mobile Apps to the Tactical Edge Ready), and many more. As a bonus, Harold provides a brilliant sidebar on another acronym: SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research). If you are trying to break into the federal market, this precis is just what you need. The takeaway is that Monkton provides a platform for developers to deliver safe and secure code to people in our mobile world. This can mean a warfighter, a clinician, or even an emergency responder from FEMA.
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Ep 198 Creating a Solid Foundation for AI
11/26/2024
Ep 198 Creating a Solid Foundation for AI
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? When Qlik was founded in 1993, hard drives were measured in megabytes, and the Internet was primarily text-based. If lucky, you could get information in structured columns and formats. Fast forward thirty years, and some estimate YouTube alone has 4.3 petabytes of data loaded every day. The federal government certainly has its share of formatted data. A recent survey showed that 80% of data collected by the federal government is unstructured. This is information like text files, videos, or emails that are stored in many formats. As a result, it isn't easy to store and manage. This has a real impact when an organization tries to take advantage of Artificial Intelligence. Today, we sit down with Andrew Churchill to discuss creating a solid data foundation for AI. We detail topics like data movement, data streaming, and data quality during the discussion. He differentiates between data lakes and data warehouses as strategies for handling all the unstructured data used for training AI models.
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Ep 197 Managing Federal Cyber Tools
11/21/2024
Ep 197 Managing Federal Cyber Tools
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? With public speaking, everyone has butterflies before they begin; instructors tell speakers to get them to fly in formation. When it comes to tools for cybersecurity, we have a similar situation – you may have End point Detection and Response, Extended Detection and Response, Managed Detection and Response, DR, XDR, MDR, Security Information and Event Management, and many others. ThreatQuotient was founded with the intention of making sure these disparate tools provide actionable information for federal agencies. During today’s interview with Craig Mueller, he takes us through context, customization, and collaboration that is needed in all federal agencies. The net result is the reduction in false positives and automation of the intelligence lifecycle. Criag Mueller brings up a topic that is rarely covered—air gapped systems. Because of their deep understanding of the intelligence community, ThreatQuotient can provide services to agencies that use air-gapped networks.
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Ep 196 How to take a Federal Network Above and Beyond
11/19/2024
Ep 196 How to take a Federal Network Above and Beyond
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Ep 196 How to take a Federal Network Above and Beyond Today, we see our network being pushed and pulled in every direction: remote users demand access, millions of endpoints must be managed, and wireless networks abound. The Internet we use every day was designed for a much more humble requirement: essentially, bursts of communication between small entities. Our interview with Dan DeBacker from Extreme Networks will define these new requirements and how innovation can keep you up to speed. One of the best podcasts in Washington, DC, is “Feds at the Edge.” It recognizes the rapid decentralization of systems, which has reached the point where some organizations are considering doing the “compute” aspect of the network at the edge. Let me state the obvious: a network that is not optimized will not allow speed to be efficiently achieved. Hybrid networks can increase complexity to the point where speed degenerates and opportunities for malicious actors can appear. During the interview, Dan DeBacker details how methods and techniques can be applied to carefully examine a network and ferret out stealth networks and areas that can “leak” access. When a system is visible, it is easier to incorporate legacy networks and enhance connectivity between sites.
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Ep 195 AI in a World of Data Poisoning and Automated Chaos
11/14/2024
Ep 195 AI in a World of Data Poisoning and Automated Chaos
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Federal technology leaders operate in a confusing world. On the one hand, they must grant access to data that is needed by users; on the other hand, they must comply with security requirements that severely restrict that access. Craig Mueller from Varonis offers a solution: efficient data management will ensure that all information will be carefully categorized to allow this razor’s edge of operation. The approach will allow for a concept called “complete coverage.” “Complete coverage extends to everything in the hybrid cloud as well as legacy systems. During the interview, Craig Mueller describes a concept called Data Security Posture Management. Essentially, this process allows for complete coverage, governance, and user analytics. Many do not realize that AI tools crawl a network and assemble as much as they can. In a federal application, there may be information that is not categorized correctly and should not be allowed to be scanned. This is a classic example of data that gives the ability to share too easily. Proper organization of data, both structured and unstructured, will all the balancing game of access and security to be deployed and scaled.
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Ep. 194 Where does ServiceNow fit in Federal Technology?
11/12/2024
Ep. 194 Where does ServiceNow fit in Federal Technology?
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Our guest today is Jonathan Alboum, the Federal CTO for ServiceNow Federal. This interview should begin like Mission Impossible movies. “Jonathan, your mission, should you accept it, is to describe all the variations ServiceNow serves federal technology leaders. You have 25 minutes. This message will self-destruct in ten seconds.” This is an “impossible mission” because Service Now has customers in over one hundred agencies. It sure appears each instance is unique. One way to understand this “variation on a theme” is to look at the agenda for their annual conference. In March 2024, ServiceNow covered topics ranging from agile software development to forms to new vs. legacy applications. It is kind of hard to find a Gartner quadrant for ServiceNow. During the interview, Jonathan delves into one aspect of artificial intelligence and details the application of large language models and smaller large language models. Listen to the interview and consider it a “tasting menu” for efficiency, productivity, and integration concepts. Oh yes, it also dives into applied Artificial Intelligence.
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Ep. 193 Evolution of DevOps to AIOps
11/07/2024
Ep. 193 Evolution of DevOps to AIOps
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Everyone awake in biology class remembers the difference between a somatic and an autonomic nervous system. (Cheat sheet: You can control somatic, but the other kicks in without knowing.) What does this have to do with federal information technology? Today, we sat down with Dave Link, the founder of Science Logic, and he talked about how to manage complex federal systems. We all know in the early days, one could use a spreadsheet to update and patch most networks. However, today’s hybrid networks and supercharged cyber-attacks are throwing manual methods out the window. Dave Link suggests an automated approach that parallels human biology can be the answer. For example, he calls his system an “autonomic IT.” A quick translation means that an agent can run in the background and examine the health of a network. It can evaluate and patch automatically, like the system that controls your heartbeat and respiration. When there is an issue, a sentient human can jump in. This may be like a human being moving out of the way of an oncoming bus. This person has an operating cardiovascular system; however, a human must alter survival. Listen to the interview to see how this human/technology parallel holds up.
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Ep 192 Forensic Analysis and Digital Footprint
11/05/2024
Ep 192 Forensic Analysis and Digital Footprint
Ep 192 Forensic Analysis and Digital Footprint Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Cellebrite is a company that earned its stripes in the commercial world with its ability to find a needle in a haystack. In other words, they have developed an ability to sift through mountains of data, find the essential parts of an investigation, and leverage that information to close a case. In other words, anyone can find the proverbial needle; who can find the right needle that will solve the puzzle and bring the case to closure? The federal government is plagued with fraud and abuse from very sophisticated malicious actors. These actors are adept at creating false identities and covering their tracks. The GAO estimates that in 2023, Fraudnet reported 4,400 allegations in fiscal year 2023. Further, the Department of Justice reports $2 billion in illicit activity. It takes talent mastered in the commercial world to close federal cases. During the interview, Maurice Cook provides examples of the restricted federal environment in which Cellebrite must operate. They must be transparent and ethical on all levels. Fortunately, Cellebrite has managed to transfer that commercial skill set to the federal government under the guise of a digital investigative platform. Listen to gain a better understanding of forensic analysis and digital footprints.
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Ep. 191 The Surge of Google Public Sector
10/31/2024
Ep. 191 The Surge of Google Public Sector
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Google's public sector has exploded into the federal technology marketplace. Today, we recapitulated the recent Google Public Sector event and tried to understand the reasons for the success. Our guest is Troy Bertram, Executive Managing Director of Google's public Sector Partner Ecosystem. Together, we review the keynote presentations, essential concepts, and the value Google can bring to rapid innovation in the federal government. The event kicked off with Karen Dahut, CEO of Google Public Sector, emphasizing the value of making systems foundationally secure. Apparently, this message resonates with the tech audience. Although Google Public Sector has only been around for two years, it saw 1,000+ people attend, including 24 federal leaders and attendees from over ten countries. Apparently, operational resilience is an international concept. We also heard some entertaining concepts. Leigh Palmer talked about AI as “always confident, not always correct.” She and her panel focused on the importance of having valid data before the discussion of artificial intelligence begins. Forrester has some predictions about the public sector that apply to federal cloud usage. They say that “public sectors should become more adaptive to build resilience and fuel innovation. Troy Bertram focuses on the DoD's efforts to leverage many of the concepts detailed at this conference.
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Ep. 190 Going Deeper with Federal User Experience
10/29/2024
Ep. 190 Going Deeper with Federal User Experience
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Humans can be easily deceived. You look at an iceberg and think that is all you have; the same approach can be applied to federal websites. At first glance, you notice the visual and do not understand how the website may be providing valid information or if this can be done in a timely manner. Those aspects of web design are essential and can be measured easily with well-known tools like heat maps, Google Analytics, and user surveys. Today, we go below the surface of the iceberg. Lee Becker from Medallia helps listeners expand the user interface concept to include the outside and the inside. For example, a superficial understanding of the user interface would serve a citizen in a form. This is one way to interpret Executive Order 14058, “Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government. “ However, when you dig deeper, you will understand that in 2022, 190 million hours were spent on forms at the Department of Homeland Security. Lee Becker shares his experience and shows listeners how to go beyond the screen, dig deeper with the user interface, and improve larger goals like collaboration, security, and transparency. Ep. 190 User Experience: the plow must go deeper.
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Ep. 189 Unlocking the $178 billion-dollar small business market.
10/24/2024
Ep. 189 Unlocking the $178 billion-dollar small business market.
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Robb Wong helps clients at Deep Water Point & Associates better understand the U.S. Small Business Administration. They recently announced that Fiscal Year 2023 had a record-high 28.4 % of federal contracts to small businesses. Robb is in the perfect position to help. He has started several small businesses and was appointed associate administrator at the Office of Government Contracting & Business Development in the U.S. Small Business Administration. This experience makes him the perfect person to help listeners understand existing rules and proposed rules to help them develop the federal technology business. Here are four highlights of the conversation: He emphasized the importance of adapting to proposed SBA rule changes, which could alter small business strategies for 2025. Wong advocated for increasing the 8(a) sole source limit to $8-10 million and suggested gradual transitions for mentor-protege joint ventures to maintain small business participation. He also called for government support to cover the prohibitive costs of CMMC certification. Encourage clients and the industry to participate in the rulemaking process and provide comments on the proposed changes. Prepare small businesses for the changes to the mentor-protege program, which are expected to be implemented in early 2023.
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Ep. 188 Understanding Public Sector Partnerships
10/22/2024
Ep. 188 Understanding Public Sector Partnerships
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? The federal government is the largest employer in the United States, employing approximately three million people. It buys everything from rubber bands to rockets. In the area of technology, it buys everything from toner for a copier to communications to a satellite. How can a small company sell to this monolith? Some will argue that the best approach is to develop a relationship with a successful company to understand the dynamics of federal technology acquisition. Connect with Slalom at the ACT-IAC conference in Hershey, PA on October 27, 2024 Today, we sit down with Jim Igoe, Slalom's Director of Public Sector Partnerships. He describes why Slalom has successfully partnered with over seven hundred companies. He mentions several concepts. >>>> focus on change that matters. In other words, federal employees can notice a discernable change when an engagement is complete. >>> Develop a thorough and complete understanding of the project before commencing. Listen to the interview to better understand how to enter a complicated market and identify, foster, and build relationships with strategic partners.
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Ep. 187 Accelerating Application Refactoring with AI in DevSecOps
10/17/2024
Ep. 187 Accelerating Application Refactoring with AI in DevSecOps
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Joel Krooswik from Gitlab has seen more code reviews than he can count. He has seen duplicate code, insufficient data, and insecure code. "Work harder" may be the maxim in the NFL, but this is a fool's errand regarding software development. Traditionally, a code review would yield remediation that would take hours and detailed work. During the interview today, Joel looks at how Artificial Intelligence can be applied to four areas: Clean code. A system may work now despite problems. However, it can fail once it is stress-assessed with mountains of data. Clean code means it is easier to scale. Speed. Humans may not be able to see system inadequacies that slow it down. AI can see log jams that a human cannot. Duplicate code. Various individuals have maintained older systems so that code may have been duplicated. Duplicate code is complex for humans to find but easy for AI. New features. Application "A" may run on a system with no problems; when updated, it may highlight issues you do not know exist. AI can look at code and allow for more accessible features. During the interview, Joel focuses on how these abilities can be applied to the federal environment.
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Ep. 186 How AI is Shaping The Future of Work in Government
10/15/2024
Ep. 186 How AI is Shaping The Future of Work in Government
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Last year, we were all dazzled by Artificial Intelligence vacuuming up words to spit out text, collecting code, and generating code. Well, it's time to see if those parlor tricks can be applied to federal work. Bob Ritchie is a self-proclaimed "code warrior" with years of experience evaluating federal software projects. He mentions three areas where AI can help federal projects. It's tedious work to review code and try to make improvements. Software developers' analytical abilities can be better utilized by having the code highlighted and remediating the problem. Security. A famous phrase in software development is "shift left." Problems arise when security mandates are applied to existing codes. If you assume a timeline in software creation, a shift to the left means putting the correct code before release. AI can help developers look at previous code iterations and quickly make security changes before release. Humans. Bob Ritchie has seen the power of AI and has also seen analysts not using correct prompts to take advantage of that power. His solution is to create a variation on the popular Hack-a-thon: a "prompt-a-thon." In other words, you need to get a group of people together and help them understand the proper way to word a prompt to get the results you need. This is a fascinating interview with a well-known expert who provides an excellent summary of current policy trends and the impact of AI on government modernization efforts.
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Ep. 185 Post Quantum Encryption: Defense Against the Dark Arts
10/10/2024
Ep. 185 Post Quantum Encryption: Defense Against the Dark Arts
John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? When it comes to preparing for a hurricane, the federal government has FEMA, NOAA, and a wide range of recovery options. However, we all know quantum is coming down the road, and many are not prepared for what will come. And it will come. We do not know when. Serious scholars have posited that future quantum computers will be able to break our current encryption. What is quantum encryption? You can go to YouTube and be impressed with the advanced mathematics involved in quantum. The basic idea is that someday in the future, specialized computers will be able to crack today’s encryption. During the interview, experts from Tyto Athene discuss prevention and elaborate on a concept called Post Quantum Encryption. Some parts of the federal government take this concept seriously. NIST has considered some options and is offering some tests. Richard Wheeler gives a detailed description of the NIST initiatives. One may ask, why worry now? This is because nation-states are vacuuming up and storing data. As for now, they cannot decrypt it. However, they may be able to in the future. Personal information and federal secrets will have value somewhere down the road.
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Ep. 184 Managing Microservices in a Complex Federal Environment
10/08/2024
Ep. 184 Managing Microservices in a Complex Federal Environment
John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? If you read federal mandates, “continuous monitoring” is becoming popular. If you type the phrase into Google Trends, you will see a drastic rise in the past five years. However, very few people can detail ways to implement this noble policy. Today, we sit down with Branden Wood from Tetrate to explore an option that can assist federal leaders in taking a strong step toward the elusive goal of Zero Trust and continuous monitoring. The answer involves understanding something called the service mesh. This is a concept of a service layer whose entire purpose is to monitor communication between services in an application. Many benefits accrue from using this sophisticated form of communication. For example, one can execute load balancing, encrypt data, and discover other running services. The discovery process may have the most impact on cybersecurity. In today’s complicated software development world, automated processes may generate unexpected activity. Even an experienced software developer may not be able to recognize the impact of the code he has released. Service mesh architecture begins with providing observability, reliability, and security in today’s large-scale microservices architecture. During the interview, Branden Wood references Air Force’s Platform One as a federal organization that has embraced Tetrate to provide secure code in this increasingly dangerous world.
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Ep. 183 Hidden Relationships in Large Data Sets
10/03/2024
Ep. 183 Hidden Relationships in Large Data Sets
John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? History books will document the origin of the relational database at around 1970. About a decade later graph technology was introduced but it has taken decades for the cost of storage to go down and the ability to compute to go up. Finally, we can take advantage of a new way to unlock answers from a database. A typical relational database looks at information in tables. This can be fantastic for many actions, which is why it became popular. However, drilling down into information can involve re-indexing and hopping around tables. Graphing technology looks at the data and tries to find relationships. As consumers, we know if we purchase an expensive couch with a credit card, the credit card company may email and question if that is a valid purchase. Well, multiply that by hundreds of thousands of users and millions of data points. It is not just a couch; it may be automated financial transactions that involve fraud. Attend the For a human to sit down with some tables of data would make the process so time-consuming, that millions could be stolen before the culprit was discovered. During the interview, John Bender from Neo4J explains how they respect the existing data structures but can layer on a deeper understanding of the relationship between a specific transaction and an outcome. In other words, you will not have to say goodbye to your data silos. Another application is understanding the supply chain. Because so much hardware and software are outsourced, it is hard to connect the dots. John Bender refers to an Army project where they have eight million nodes and twenty-one million relationships. Listen to put into perspective new ways to improve analytical speed and reduce risk from fraud to the supply chain.
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Ep. 182 Sorry, not your father’s Oracle
10/01/2024
Ep. 182 Sorry, not your father’s Oracle
Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn Want to listen to other episodes? Today, we talk about a 47-year-old company whose income was up 21% last year. Yes, the company is Oracle. Kim Lynch is a well-known technology executive, and she highlights how Oracle can solve complex federal tech concerns. She begins by giving a brief overview of the recent Oracle Cloud World announcements. Kim Lynch takes all these announcements from Oracle Cloud World and applies them to specific federal problems. If you are interested in leveraging the hybrid cloud and improving security, this is the interview for you. Larry Ellison’s comments will surprise (shock) people who work with the federal government. First, was the embrace of other cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. Who can believe that Larry Ellison is inviting leaders from AWS and GCP to the stage at an Oracle event? The concept is we live in a hybrid world; Oracle is embracing this “multiverse” to help federal leaders leverage the cloud platform in its entirety. Secondly, Kim Lynch reflects on the idea that Oracle employees will not have passports next year. After years of cybersecurity lifting signs of “Kill the password,” Oracle may be the leader. If you have been in the world of technology, you know that we are all flooded with data. During the interview, Kim Lynch uses the term “petabyte” comfortably. Scaling to Zettabytes will make all data experts cringe, but it is a term used casually. Wow. This is not your father’s Oracle, even if it is 47 years old.
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