CISA issued an Emergency Directive requiring Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies with certain VMware products connected to the internet to act as if they’ve been compromised. CISA directed that any FCEB agencies leveraging the following VMware products initiate threat hunting activities using active detection methods provided in the Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) issued by CISA. The Authentication Bypass vulnerability impacting VMware Workspace ONE Access, Identity Manager, and vRealize Automation has resulted in a maximum CVSSv3 base score of 9.8. REI has determined that these vulnerabilities pose an unacceptable risk to FCEB agencies and require emergency action.
Experts gathered for an insightful discussion around leveraging industry best practices to drive innovation and achieve meaningful workforce improvements. Here are some of the insights that panelists offered about the current state of the federal workforce and what is expected to happen over the next few years due to the pandemic-driven training and mentoring needs of the American workforce.
At REI’s Government Technology Breakfast “Career Paths and Skills Needed for the Next 10 Years of Government IT,” panelists discussed the career progression that led to their executive roles in government IT today.
An effective and popular frictionless tool used to cut time and expenses related to IT acquisitions that is gaining momentum is the Periodic Table of Acquisition Innovation (PTAI). The PTAI, managed by the Federal Acquisition Institute, provides contracting departments a better understanding of “the art of the possible” in helping them reduce friction when procuring technology solutions. In this blog post, we’ll explain what PTAI is, why it’s important and how to use it. We also provide an example of its use at the IRS and, lastly, the cultural mindset needed to gain greater adoption and expansion of the PTAI.
I recently facilitated a Government Analytics Breakfast Forum (co-hosted by REI Systems and Johns Hopkins University), where the Director of Enterprise Data Services for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Shannon Files, made a presentation on “Building a Data and Analytics Organization in a ‘Startup’ Government Agency.” Here’s what I took away that might be useful to any agency hoping to strengthen its analytics program.
