Public sector IT modernization's journey to the cloud is taking a revolutionary new turn as agency leaders grapple with how to harness the power of artificial intelligence to help them securely manage the scale and speed of their workloads.
One challenge that remains at the forefront of these efforts is ensuring that today's increasingly dynamic and distributed IT environments continue to meet complex government rules related to security, regulation, and data privacy—while learning how best to leverage the potential of AI to serve the public.
Google Cloud's understanding and recognition of these challenges was widely reflected in a series of sweeping announcements at Google Cloud Next '24 held last week, which promised new levels of security, resiliency, and AI-powered capabilities for Google Cloud's public sector customers.
Building AI capabilities within protected workspaces
When it comes to managing public sector data securely, agencies that use Google Cloud gain immediate benefits by building on top of their infrastructure. Because the architecture is designed for the cloud and also includes a significant portion of federal security controls, it's possible to prove security compliance and gain authority to operate in weeks rather than months when folding applications like Workspace or AI models like Gemini.
Another way agencies can boost the security of their workloads is by using Google Cloud Assured Workloads, which also have basic government security compliance safeguards built in, according to a panel of technology experts who spoke at Google Cloud Next '24.
The panelists, representing NASA, Palo Alto Networks, SAP and Google Cloud, argued that using zero trust and compliance-as-code technologies has become essential to creating and maintaining compliant and easily repeatable business environments. This is due in part to the diversity of government agency compliance requirements, from FedRAMP to the Department of Defense's own Level 2, 4, and 5 security controls.
By deploying workloads in pre-approved, software-defined environments that are set up to restrict activity to compatible products and restrict where data can flow and who can access it, agencies can better ensure their workloads meet government requirements.
“Moving to Assured GCP is not just an upgrade; it is a transformative leap forward,” said Colin Estes, IT director for NASA's operational MRI technologies.
He pointed to two benefits: “The ability to create consistent documentation as a product of these large language models as well as helping us produce well-structured definitions of what we do, based on your actual applications within Google Cloud. It's not a human saying, this is what we do. We generate what we do from Our environment I think this will really change the game in terms of how federal agencies manage risk across these portfolios.
Among other benefits, speakers noted:
Simplify software development – Moving to guaranteed GCP allows government agencies to leverage and deploy the latest technologies and methodologies, such as containerization and microservices, with unprecedented ease.
Focus on the Mission – By moving to Assured GCP, organizations can shift their focus from the backend to what really matters – their mission. This shift represents not only an operational change, but a philosophical change, where technology becomes an enabler rather than an obstacle in supporting the agency's missions.
According to Michael Clark, senior director of Palo Alto Networks, another reason to adopt assertive workloads is the volume of data and compute intensity with all that data. “We're at that critical pivot point. We've used this data to identify new threats and find zero-day threats so we can enforce Zero Trust, improve security protection mechanisms, and identify new areas of innovation for automated threat detection and remediation.
When building a compliant environment, Hunter Downey, NVP of Engineering and Product Launch at SAP, urged session attendees to “build it within a framework where I can make sure the controls are in place, so I can rinse and iterate across 20 to 100 different teams, and potentially make an impact.” “On that.” 1000 or 5000 developers. If you start with the lowest common denominator, you will fail. The reason we partner with Google Cloud Platform proven workloads is so you are able to control the flow of information and messages. The moment data becomes global, it becomes a different discipline.
Among other AI-related developments announced at Google Cloud Next '24:
Gemini for Google Cloud is a new generation of AI assistants for developers and Google Cloud services and applications that help users work and overcome security challenges more effectively. See more ads here.
Learn more about how Google Public Sector can help your organization “start your AI and security journey.”
This article was produced by Scoop News Group and sponsored by Google Public Sector. Google Public Sector is one of the guarantors of Artificial Intelligence Week.
