Page 8 - FCW, January/February 2021

GameChanger Second, agencies must handle the sheer
agencies should deploy applications and infrastructure using templates, automated testing and deployment frameworks that allow them to make changes rapidly
Rubrik can protect physical and virtual workloads in data centers, cloud and Software-as-a-Service workloads, da tabases, and structured and unstructured data. What’s more, it can help detect and remediate ransomware attacks, identify data spillage across confidential boundaries and facilitate cloud migration. It’s taking backup-and-recovery tool and transforming it into a modern data management platform.
amount of data they deal with. The larger and more accurate the dataset, the faster it can be analyzed, and the sooner officials can make data-driven decisions. But agencies first must understand what data they have, where it lives and whether it’s relevant. Then they can compartmentalize and centralize as needed.
and bring those changes to market with confidence that they won’t break the application stack.
“The correlation of these datasets, the refinement of these datasets, the analysis, visualization or presentation of these datasets – they’re all going to be driven by cloud technologies and artificial intelligence,” Gurling said.
Agency officials also need to break from the commonly held mindset of
data protection for backup and recovery purposes only. In today’s threat landscape, data compromise is about deleting, locking or accessing data without authorization. That requires a solution that can identify which users are active on the data, what part of the data is sensitive and enable instantaneous recovery based on past versions of the data should it be locked or damaged.
“Data is one of the cornerstones
of digital transformation because it’s critical to extracting insights from your activity,” Gurling said. “It’s critical to making well-informed decisions that are based in fact. True digital transformation requires large relevant datasets that you can quickly analyze and present in a rapid and meaningful manner to whomever is presenting that dataset.”
But rather than focus on specific technologies or technology stacks, agencies need to look at operating models and architectures that support the goals and user experience – both internal and external – that they want to produce. For example,
“This is real data protection, not just backup,” Sinha said.
IT Modernization
Pandemic accelerates modernization
In response to COVID-19, agencies move quickly to get data in line.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of data and modern information technology in ways that perhaps no other event has. Although many government agencies were already on a path toward using modernized IT
to store, protect and use data, the public- health crisis greatly accelerated the need.
This is most apparent in the abrupt
shift from onsite to online work that government agencies experienced last spring as the novel coronavirus took
hold in the United States. Some agencies reported telework rates of 80% and 90% in March 2020. Suddenly, agencies went from their usual high-touch approach with data to almost zero touch as organizations faced suddenly decentralized operations when work-from-home issues came out last spring. With users physically farther from the services they’re consuming, government faced challenges in how to deliver them. Digital transformation and pushing data out to the tactical edge was the obvious answer.
It meant using cloud- and web-based technologies because they are easily accessible remotely and efficient on
a variety of devices. The importance
the data inventories.
“Data is not only critical for our
of data governance came into focus, too, because agencies must control the ebb and flow of data, and ensure it is being used for legitimate use cases and stored in appropriate places despite this decentralized operating model.
modernization journey and driving change, it’s critical for how we respond and how we recover as a nation,” former Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent said in May 2020.
The Federal Data Strategy gave agencies a ready high-level guideline for what to do as they entered territory they’d only partially prepared for. Its issuance
in 2019 was auspicious timing, given the turmoil, and the work that many agencies had begun to do to comply with strategy requirements gave them a jump-start on pandemic response. For example, with agencies relying on one another and the public seeking government information in record numbers, a May 2020 to the Federal Data Strategy 2020 Action Plan directed agencies to prioritize adding COVID-19 response-related data assets to
Most of the accelerated modernization efforts that agencies put in place quickly last year to respond to immediate needs are likely to remain in place for the long term. After all, a survey of 300 federal employees in October 2020 found that 82% think remote work will continue after the public-health threat passes. Now, agencies need to re-evaluate their data and modernization policies to ensure that they make the best use of both now and in the future.
For more information, please visit www.rubrik.com/federal