We look forward to a new year and new opportunities for innovation and growth in the government contracting community. This past year, we experienced an increased emphasis on big data, insider threat, merging technology with healthcare, and the internet of things, among others.
WashingtonExec reached out to those most knowledgeable and experienced in the federal contracting space. We asked executives in and around the Beltway for insight on the direction they see the government contracting community heading in 2018. Topics discussed include M&A activity, public/private sector collaboration, cloud computing, the incoming millennial workforce in defense/IT/health care, talent retention and more.
LogRhythm
Next in the series is Dan Wilbricht, senior director of federal at LogRhythm, where he leads the team responsible for creating strategic technology relationships within the federal agencies, their programs and the system integrators that support this sector. Here are his insights:
Insider threat and cybersecurity in general will stay at the top of the list of items that our government will need to focus on in order to protect, serve and support our country.
Continued cybersecurity professional support with a focus on offensive and defensive capabilities.
The government will continue to focus on the utilization of commercial off-the-shelf products with the primary function of professional services to be the support, implementation and enhancement of those products. The toughest challenge we have is maintaining security clearances for our consultants and getting others through the clearance process.
Our strategy has been to focus on working with the leadership, the day-to-day cyber staff and the system integrators at the program level. Our plan is to continue that focus. Now that the leadership has been further established, and once the budgets are approved, my belief is that we are in a prime position for the government to take ownership of our products and enhance our security posture.
Lack of budgets scare me and a future war could slow things down, but the need to protect our infrastructure is key to both war and reducing costs, which is also exciting.
There have been improvements and as we continue to work on machine analytics and artificial intelligence, the private sector and the government will grow together.
There will be more mandatory compliance around cybersecurity and the need to share more across the government and private sector so that intrusion can be identified more rapidly and action can occur.
Intrusions will occur, but it is about how quickly you identify these attacks and how quickly you can respond and fix them. The younger generation are more cognizant of the overall capabilities of social media and understand how to use it to their advantage. There will have to be a new universal identification number for financial and health care due to the data loss around Social Security Numbers.