The Government Technology Insider Podcast

The military often looks to industry to collaborate on cutting edge solutions and technologies to help advance its overall modernization mission. The Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, with its commercial 5G network called the 5G Living Lab, is a prime example of industry and military collaboration in action and has created many 5G powered use cases for the Department of Defense. At the 5G Living Lab, stakeholders meet to develop scalable capabilities and drive new innovations to support the Department of Defense’s initiatives. Miramar is a unique 5G test location because of its significant exposure to the warfighter and proximity to San Diego. In the first part of this conversation about 5G powered use cases, Captain Ben Cohen, Director of NavalX SoCal Tech Bridge, and Dominic Bonaduce, Product Strategy Manager – Device Technology at Verizon, discuss Miramar’s 5G Living Lab, use cases in process, and plans for the future.

Listen to this podcast to learn strategies being used by defense agencies to accelerate secure software delivery that meets the needs of the warfighter.

Listen to insights from cybersecurity expert Michael Sieber on how cyber threat intelligence can help defense agencies to improve national security responses.

In the “Meeting Public Safety Needs for the Department of Defense: A Podcast” interview, Tetoya Gibson, Retired Air Force, DoD Crisis Response Manager at Verizon Frontline; and Calvin Jackson, Crisis Response Manager, Northeast at Verizon Frontline, shared insights into how the DoD can better meet current and future public safety challenges.

Pop-up and emergency networks are temporary connections that organizations can use to bridge coverage gaps or provide reliable communications during a man-made crisis, natural disaster, or even large-scale public events. These networks are practical and relevant today because they are easy to implement and cost-effective to deploy. By leveraging pop-up and emergency networks, agencies can ensure dependable connections during critical moments, minimizing disruptions, and restoring essential services at the moment of greatest need. For example, agencies will often have a need to quickly respond to an area and be able to provide communications from “hour one” of being there.In the second part of our FWA podcast series Dave Butta, Managing Partner, Federal Government Sales at Verizon, Rose Mata, Director, Federal Healthcare, Finance, and Education at Verizon, and Curtis Mentz, Sr. Manager for the Verizon Frontline Crisis Response Team at Verizon, share their insights around the need for pop-up and emergency networks, along with key use cases and future developments in this arena.

To implement a true Zero Trust approach and provide the next level of protection for data and users, agencies need to move beyond compliance. We spoke with Hansang Bae, Chief Technologist, Public Sector at Zscaler, to learn more.

Following the award of the DoD’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract, Maximus Cloud expert Frank Reyes explained how defense & IC agencies can reap the benefits of multi-cloud.

While future cybersecurity threats from quantum cryptography and quantum computers are nascent, agencies must start hardening their communications infrastructures from these new attacks. Quantum has numerous applications within the federal government as it is ideally suited to protect sensitive information such as healthcare data, financial information, and classified intelligence.In the “Hardening Federal Infrastructures Against Quantum Threats” interview, Lamont Copeland, Director of Federal Solutions Architecture with Verizon, and Jim Westdorp, Senior Director Strategic Initiatives at Ciena Government Solutions, broke down the different quantum types, threats and zero trust compatibility to federal agencies and beyond.“One of the reasons why networks today are susceptible to quantum attacks is because PKI exchanges keys in such a way that they are mathematically susceptible to attacks,” said Westdorp. “Looking at changing our cryptographic infrastructure is really about preparing networks today from future risks that can be exposed to from improvements in quantum computers.”

All branches of the United States military are currently facing a recruitment crisis.Despite understanding that recruitment needs to follow a different format, many military recruitment centers are located in areas with standard Internet network connectivity. As a result, they still rely on legacy technology, making it difficult to connect with today’s recruits.With recruiters working harder than ever to build the next generation of America’s fighting forces, they need to be able to connect and engage with recruits on their terms. For younger generations, this means connecting immediately via mobile platforms and using gaming in highly engaging ways.In our latest podcast: Jared Colvig, Connected Solutions Architect at Verizon, and Mark DeVol, Vice President of Federal Sales at Cradlepoint, discuss ways enhanced mobile connectivity can help improve recruiting among the branches.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides federal agencies with the ability to improve the resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure. The Department of Energy (DOE) is the largest consumer of data and is tightly linked to other critical infrastructure systems and is in desperate need of modernization. Recently the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) partnered with Maximus to use technology solutions like High Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) edge computing to improve environmental sustainability and resilience threats. We talked with Sonny Landry, Senior Director of Change Management at Maximus, to discuss the work done by NETL and the improvements they’ve helped deliver.