We’ll start with an ancient adage: The only constant is change. New mandates, political turmoil and intensifying cyber attacks have challenged government agencies to embrace modernization as they navigate a landscape in flux.
Across the public sector, organizations are banding together — and forging and strengthening partnerships with the private sector — to modernize their IT infrastructure for greater digital resilience, ensuring the security and continuity of critical services that citizens depend on.
LaLisha Hurt, a public sector federal industry advisor at Splunk, has spent her career at the intersection of innovation, cybersecurity and government. As a former chief information security officer (CISO) and with two decades of experience advancing government and industry technology services, she is deeply familiar with the cybersecurity landscape and the ever-evolving abilities of our adversaries.
“In recent years, I’ve seen agencies make strides in modernizing their systems and transforming their critical applications,” Hurt says. “Systems and tools continue to improve each day.” Across the sector, she sees four key trends driving modernization as investments in advanced cybersecurity strategies, right-sized cloud adoption, purpose-driven AI and public-private partnerships accelerate transformation for better citizen outcomes.
Introduction
Current trends transforming the public sector for better citizen outcomes
Modernizing
Mission Delivery
In the few years since the release of the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, the term
“Zero Trust” has become synonymous with government cybersecurity. But “Zero Trust” doesn’t tell the whole story.
“In theory, we do want to trust people; we just need to have the right controls,” Hurt says. “I call it getting back to the basics of cyber hygiene — having controls in place that enable us to work in a safe and secure environment.”
It’s not so much about “Zero Trust” as it is “earned trust,” she continues. If agencies prioritize access control and visibility, those who need access can work efficiently while anomalies are quickly detected and investigated. She’s seeing agencies implementing strategies like multifactor and continuous authentication, strict endpoint and remote access management, and advanced encryption to introduce identity, credential and access management (ICAM) across all layers.
Trend 1: Advanced cybersecurity strategies and talent support resilience
When implemented well, cloud technologies can increase resilience and improve collaboration — helping agencies deliver services faster and more intelligently. As agencies advance from a cloud-first “lift-and-shift” mentality to cloud smart, they’re also searching for the best fit for their organization.
“What option is the right option for them? Is it on-prem? Is it hybrid? Is it cloud? At Splunk, we do cloud value assessments to help customers decide,” Hurt says. “Weighing the pros and cons of those options helps us customize the right model and approach for them to move forward.”
Trend 2: Cloud-based modernization isn’t
one-size-fits-all
“People feel as though moving from on prem to cloud will give them cost savings, and in some cases it can. Not in all cases, but most cases. But I think even beyond that, it just provides a little bit more scalability, and provides some, you know, workflow efficiencies, if implemented correctly, if you're partnering with folks like ourselves or others in the market, I think even beyond cost. I'm starting to see that conversation shift slightly, it's like, ‘How can we gain efficiencies? How can we do more? How can we scale across our technologies vs. being siloed in this one space?’ And so I think, transitioning from those legacy systems, almost, kind of — not forces you, but it encourages. Encourages you to look at things like the cloud to help modernize you, and get that scale and efficiency that we all want and need for the future.”
Cloud adoption doesn’t have to be a sudden shift. No one has to jump straight from 100% on-prem to 100% in the cloud. Instead, an organization can gradually move to a hybrid environment to get a feel for the benefits and costs while planning a roadmap for the future. Though many agencies have seen cloud-related cost savings, the conversation is changing to focus more on benefits like efficiency, scalability and collaboration.
“At the end of the day, we’re all trying to protect our nation’s critical assets, but on the government side we’re a little hesitant to share our information,” Hurt says. “Even our missteps and failures — there are learnings from those. If something didn’t work for me at Agency A, I should share that with Agencies B and C so we can all learn from each other.”
Enhancing collaboration among agencies depends partly on a culture shift to fully embracing interoperability, Hurt explains. As government leaders become more amenable to information sharing, cloud technologies will help streamline the process.
Changing the conversation around cloud benefits
Millions of California residents depend on public assistance for essential items and services. Built on AWS, the California Statewide Automated Welfare System (CalSAWS) replaces three disparate legacy systems with a single cloud-based platform. IT services provider Accenture turned to Splunk Cloud Platform, Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Enterprise security to ensure the system collects data and generates real-time actionable insights, improving productivity, lowering costs and reducing security risks. Splunk supports a wide range of public sector organizations, including over 900 higher education institutions and 48 of the 50 largest U.S. cities. Read their stories here.
Real-life use case: CalSAWS meets
Californians’ diverse welfare needs
AI helps the decision intelligence of humans — the keyword being humans. AI is most effective when purpose-built and humans are in the loop at the center of it all, so the human workforce will play an important role as a key partner to AI.
LaLisha Hurt, Public Sector Federal Industry Advisor
Splunk
Delivering on the Nation’s Cybersecurity Together
Rapid advancements in AI offer unprecedented opportunities to improve process automation and decision intelligence — but also challenge government and society to place guardrails around its ethical use. While some have voiced concerns about AI replacing humans in the workforce, Hurt encourages us to think of AI as more of a partner than a competitor.
“AI helps the decision intelligence of humans — the keyword being humans,” Hurt says. “AI is most effective when purpose-built and humans are in the loop at the center of it all, so the human workforce will play an important role as a key partner to AI.”
For organizations wanting to ramp up their use of AI, an ideal first step is analyzing current processes to determine where AI can best enhance decision intelligence. Like all new technologies, AI implementation shouldn’t be rushed simply for the sake of using an exciting new tool, but adopted in a way that will be truly useful to an organization’s mission and goals.
Some public sector organizations in government and higher education are using AI in training simulations, curricula development and other processes where it can facilitate learning and agility. Automation built into the cloud, meanwhile, further enhances the efficiency and scalability of cloud-based applications.
As organizations increase AI adoption, keeping humans in the loop remains a guiding principle.
“It’s almost like divide and conquer,” continues Hurt. “AI won’t replace human decisions and actions, but it will help. When our warfighters are on the front lines defending our country, how great would it be to have real-time analytics to help them with decision making? Of course, there need to be guard rails and best practices for using AI and what to use it for, but for the most part I’m hopeful it will help us accelerate in areas where we may not have been able to in the past.”
Trend 3: Purpose-built AI helps improve decision intelligence
LaLisha Hurt, Public Sector Federal Industry Advisor
Splunk
People, processes and technology are like three legs of a stool — one without the others makes for a wobbly, shaky experience. As agencies work hard to invest in their processes and technologies, it’s equally important for them to invest in their cyber workforce.
While the technical details of Zero Trust are always top of mind for government leaders, the human element is just as vital. “People, processes and technology are like three legs of a stool — one without the others makes for a wobbly, shaky experience,” Hurt says. “As agencies work hard to invest in their processes and technologies, it’s equally important for them to invest in their cyber workforce.”
As federal leaders navigate developments like artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and evolving cloud environments, the cyber workforce needs to advance in lock step. Skill assessments help identify knowledge gaps, and while online training and certifications can be helpful, hands-on experience is even better.
A new “IT Academy” at the Department of Homeland Security, for example, “will create standard technical orientations for all DHS employees, develop a rigorous training and rotation program for entry-level hires and offer upskilling opportunities for employees to learn new and emerging skills in areas including data science, artificial intelligence and human-centered design.”
Beyond upskilling and reskilling, Hurt notes that agencies must think differently when it comes to the recruiting and hiring process, and how they attract talent.
“We have to think a little bit outside the box when we think about our next-generation workforce,” Hurt says. “It’s OK if we hire people who don’t have a computer science degree. We have to start thinking more broadly about what skills we truly need — problem-solving, analytical skills and strong communication skills. We have to get more creative if we want to attract the talent that we know we will need for the future.”
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.
December 14, 2023
To delve further into these trends and more, register for Splunk’s GovSummit 2023. Join public sector leaders, Splunk and its partners to explore the complexities of modern digital systems and demonstrate how government and industry can work together to deliver on the nation’s cyber strategy together.
Splunk’s platform, for example, uses automation to accelerate detection, investigation and response in incident management.
Listen as LaLisha Hurt talks about the changing conversation around cloud benefits as organizations realize benefits beyond cost savings.
Trend 4: Public-private partnerships can accelerate modernization
As threats have become more persistent and sophisticated, it’s become abundantly clear that neither organizations nor the state can tackle this challenge alone. They need to work together.
“Public and private collaborations show big dividends across domestic and international partnerships,” Hurt says.
As agency leaders set their sights on achieving National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) objectives, they can look to industry partners like Splunk to help navigate the five NCS pillars, the DoD’s and CISA’s Zero Trust strategies, OMB’s Memorandum M-21-31, and other government directives. The regulatory world is complicated, which makes prioritizing compliance during digital transformation a challenge.
“Splunk has capabilities and resources that many of our government agencies are using to help them with these compliance mandates so that they can focus more on the high-value work and mission of their agency versus having to sift through these requirements,” Hurt says. “We have automation to help with that.”
Splunk has also achieved two important milestones that further demonstrate its commitment to the public sector. An ‘In Process’ designation from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Program Management Office signals Splunk’s work to achieve FedRAMP High authorization — one of the most rigorous attestations a cloud service provider can achieve. The second milestone is for the State Risk and Authorization Management Program (StateRAMP), where Splunk achieved the StateRAMP-verified status of Ready or Authorized. This assures state and local governments and higher education institutions that Splunk’s technology has achieved the highest security standard.
Beyond compliance, the right industry partners can help technology teams move past hurdles like incompatible toolsets and solutions resulting from disparate legacy systems. Splunk’s unified platform for security and observability, for example, streamlines coordinated detection and response — helping agencies address both security risks and technical debt.
“Having served in CISO roles before, I know that it can be overwhelming when you have so many different tools and systems that you have to look back and forth to get data points,” Hurt says. “When I used Splunk as a customer, it was great to have that single pane of glass that combined all of those systems, all of those data points in one place to allow me to make decisions a lot faster in critical moments.”
A Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in both security and observability, Splunk focuses on the importance of visibility and real-time analytics to inform decision making. Security and visibility go hand-in-hand, and solutions like Splunk offer a unified platform to help agencies be more resilient.
As organizations continue to navigate a landscape of persistent and sophisticated threats, a multi-pronged approach that considers technological, organizational, and, critically, human elements is key to driving digital resilience and delivering on the national cyber strategy.
