Technically Speaking

State governments want their software to be secure, compliant and designed for the 21st century. As such, many state governments are evaluating their current ERP platforms to determine how to modernize financials, procurement, human capital management, and payroll applications. While some have pursued modernization by embarking on multi-tenant cloud journeys, most organizations are still in the planning phase.

In today’s volatile and disruptive economic environment, CFOs and Finance organizations must lead organizational decision-making processes with insight, speed and confidence. Yet many Finance organizations are still bogged down by inefficiencies in routine processes within the period-end financial close and reporting cycle. And that makes it difficult to shift time to value-added analysis and decision support.

The notion of Data Analytics has been in existence for a very long time. Everyone understood data and analytics as essential to “someone” within the organization, but somehow at a distance. In the best case, the technology team would provide a user with the requested data as a means of assessing success and forecasting the future needs of the organization.

The Zero Trust (ZT) architecture is a modern concept shaping cybersecurity in the public and private sectors. The growing use of SaaS applications, migration to cloud-based architecture, a rising number of remote employees, and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) have rendered perimeter-based security obsolete. The concept of a network perimeter where those outside of the enterprise's control are malicious and insiders are trustworthy — is no longer a viable approach to cybersecurity.

Are you next? Will criminals target your organization with ransomware? No one can say for sure, so prepare now. Here are four and a half critical decisions to make – and things to do – before a crisis hits.   (What’s half a decision, you ask? What’s half an action, you may wonder. Read to end if you want to find out). 1. Do: Have a plan This sounds so obvious, but I have seen major organizations in business and government scrambling to respond to a ransomware attack. Your plan should include at least these elements?

Last month, ICIT sponsored an online panel discussion featuring a number of application development and cybersecurity experts from across industry, the federal government, and the Department of Defense. This panel discussion focused on two new security vectors that have arisen as application development practices and technologies have evolved – infrastructure as code (IaC) and APIs.