MeriTalk recently sat down with Matt Trudewind, senior technical marketing engineer on security at NetApp, to talk about all things ransomware. During the discussion, Matt dove into the growing threat of cyberattacks targeting Federal agencies, and walked through the critical steps needed in ransomware remediation. With this ever-increasing threat comes a need for a robust cybersecurity strategy with solutions and technology in place to address attacks both before – and after – they occur. Today, Matt shares his insights on the best ways to get to those goals. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is keeping a close eye on the progress of the Defense Department’s (DoD) Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program to improve the security of the defense industrial base (DIB) as CISA considers possible moves in the same direction on the civilian side of the Federal government. […]

The COVID-19 pandemic “exponentially accelerated” the pace of change in government IT – including the move to hybrid cloud infrastructures – and increased data sharing at Federal agencies like the State Department, government and industry officials said. […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced Federal, state, and local governments to adopt a hybrid cloud environment quickly, but their hybrid strategies have not been able to keep pace with the new accelerated reality of government. The bottom line: most agencies have a strategy in place, but are having trouble executing on it fully. […]

MeriTalk sat down with Jeff Whitaker, Senior Manager of Cloud Data Services at NetApp, to discuss Azure NetApp Files (ANF) and the recent deployment in the U.S. government region in Virginia. With a 12-year tenure at NetApp under his belt, Jeff now handles the marketing activities for NetApp’s Azure NetApp Files platform and the Azure overall messaging and storyline. Today, Jeff will dive into ANF’s expansive capabilities when it comes to deploying in the government region, challenges faced along the way, and what’s on the horizon as ANF looks to expand even more. […]

ThunderCat Technology has been doing business and providing IT solutions for the Federal government for over 10 years, specializing in cloud, cybersecurity, DevOps, data infrastructure, and so much more. MeriTalk sat down with ThunderCat’s Senior Cloud Architect Randy Pierce to get his insights and thoughts on where hybrid and multi-cloud environments are headed in 2020. […]

Everyone seems to know a little bit about artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, with casual opinions running the gamut from utopian dreamscapes to dystopian robot nightmares. […]

Hybrid cloud innovation is driving the data revolution and, the new data landscape will need its experts to power the future of the Federal agency data revolution. […]

IT leaders at the Federal, state, and local levels are looking forward to the adoption of artificial intelligence and automated technologies and expect to add automated capabilities soon. But many agencies are already using foundational AI technologies without recognizing it, according to a new study from MeriTalk. […]

MeriTalk recently caught up with Kirk Kern, chief technology officer for NetApp Americas, to discuss the company’s Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure (HCI) services, and how Federal government agencies can more quickly and surely take advantage of HCI to speed their path to IT modernization. […]

The Federal government spends at least $90 billion annually on IT, according to Performance.gov. And, Chris Liddell, deputy chief of staff for policy coordination, has said that the government could spend more than double that–up to $200 billion on IT each year. That type of spending could lead to innovation and efficiencies for Feds, but the path forward is often obstructed by end-of-life devices and unwieldy maintenance costs. […]

It’s probably not a shocking revelation to learn that Federal IT managers are less than happy with their agency’s IT infrastructure. Their biggest gripes, according to a recent MeriTalk survey are that it’s 1) expensive, 2) difficult to manage, and 3) inefficient. Small wonder then that the same survey found that nearly all of those who participated—92 percent of 150 Federal IT managers—were frustrated with the state of their infrastructure.   […]

It appears that the improved reliability and security of cloud computing is attracting more law enforcement agencies. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the latest agency looking to migrate applications to a commercial cloud provider. […]

It is not uncommon today for agencies to use multiple cloud services such as Amazon Web Services for putting up computing resources on demand, Salesforce for customer relationship management applications, and either Google or Microsoft for email and collaboration tools. […]

It’s a converged world for many Federal data centers, and that trend is likely to continue as agencies move to modernize their information technology infrastructures. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services is looking for ways to combat stovepiped systems by using shared services across the agency for data management. “For us, data is front and center,” said Ed Simcox, deputy chief technology officer at HHS. […]

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is in the process of moving to a 100 percent cloud-enabled agency. “It’s a bit of a journey at the moment,” Walter Bigelow, chief of the IT systems management division in the Office of Science and Technology at ATF, said at MeriTalk and NetApp’s Cloud Connect. “We will see some solid benefits out of making this move.” […]

The Federal CIO Council’s State of Federal Information Technology report stated that Federal agencies spent more than $2 billion on cloud computing services in Fiscal Year 2016. Rob Stein, vice president of Public Sector for NetApp, said that amount will increase this year. […]