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Fran Trentley, George W.

Bush

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Akamai

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Akamai

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Digital Transformation

Office, Office of

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Explain the facts,

not the politics, but

talk to the public

(and media) more

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The increasing number of recent attacks against public digital services should jolt

governments into action to better protect cloud infrastructure and digital

services.

That’s the considered view of Fran Trentley, former White House

Communications Agency, Chief Information Officer under President George W.

Bush and now Vice President of Global Security and Government Services

offerings for web content delivery leader Akamai.

Attacks such as those on the Census website are never welcome, but they are

now helping government leaders realise that they need to up their game when it

comes to not only ensuring security, but reliability in the face of attacks,

according to Trentley.

Safeguarding digital service delivery | The Mandarin http://www.themandarin.com.au/71025-safeguarding-digital-deli...

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“We’re driven by policy and

budget cycles so we’re not

tuned for small incremental

changes.

threats to our health and wealth, so

sometimes you need a driver to

demonstrate the challenge that you’re

facing.”

In Australia, this took the form in the

Census attack, but Trentley also points to

recent hacking attacks in the United States, such as the attack on the Office of

Personnel Management which targeted individuals’ private information.

“From a security perspective, [governments] realise they can’t ignore this

anymore,” he says. “We’ve seen this trend in business with security and digital

moving into the C-level over the past few years. And now we’re seeing that more

in government.”

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Trentley points out that governments and businesses are now facing strikingly

similar challenges when it comes to managing the resilience of their web sites

and applications in the face of attacks, arguing that in many cases, the solutions

are the same.

“They’re certainly more alike than different,” he says.

However, while more businesses are catching on to the harsh realities of running

digital services, Trentley says government leaders are still blasé about what it

takes to keep digital infrastructure up and running, and resilient to attacks. Parts

of government continue operating with a compliance mindset instead of

developing skills and policies that will achieve the required outcome.

“If you look at some governments around the world, and some agencies here, the

general feeling of preparedness is “I think we’re good…we’re not in too bad a

shape”, but everyone else needs a lot of work” says Trentley.

“Unfortunately, for governments specifically to move, you often need to

encounter a crisis.”

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Trentley points to his own experience in the White House, where the tragic

events of September 11 forced the US government to confront its own

technological unpreparedness.

“We recognised at the time, there were several single points of failure. The

architecture had not been given a lot of love and attention, and we had to

change it very quickly.”

“I replaced everything. Our focus was building the network to support [the !

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better. These attacks are larger, they’re happening more often, and they’re more

sophisticated,” says Trentley.

DDoonn’’tt bbee aaffrraaiidd ooff tthhee cclloouudd

So how can governments best ensure resilience against these types of attacks?

“Leverage the power of the cloud,” says Trentley. “You simply can’t protect

yourself from attacks using fixed infrastructure. The attacks are just too large.”

“There has to be a public-private partnership,” he says.

“Those days are gone. Agencies have to get comfortable using shared capability.”

Using cloud-based infrastructure such as Akamai will enable governments to tick

both “reliable” and “protected” boxes, Trentley says. He points to the FedRAMP

system in the United States, through which a body certifies third-party cloud

services as safe for any government agency to use.

“It just makes sense to move to leveraged cloud infrastructure,” he says. “Our

adversaries are using it, delivering highly distributed attacks and you need a

mitigation that is also highly distributed.

“We need resilience in networks for emergencies, and governments to be present

at all times. Build knowing the underlying infrastructure is reliable.”

EEmmbbrraaccee aa ddiiggiittaall ffuuttuurree

Building resilient infrastructure is only one piece of the puzzle, says Trentley.

Government leaders should start taking a more holistic view of the internet and

not believe that all government services can be run in their own, cordoned-off

area of cyberspace.

DTO’s digital service standard is helping drive this change, with criteria that helps

ensure government services are simpler, clearer and faster for all users.

“Think about your constituents, your employees, and customers of the future.

They’re going to be on the internet far more than today and they’ll expect digital

services that are as convenient and innovative as their favourite mobile app or

web site.

“You simply need to figure out how to operate securely in that domain. Because

it’s no longer a question of whether you’ll have adversaries targeting you – it’s a

question of when.” !


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Expanding open datarequires sociallicense: informationmandarins

Embedded researchin government a keyto better policyby Abdul Ghaffar | views 1034

Five things toconsider whendesigning a policy tomeasure

TToopp VViieewwss

Victorian government is rapidly digitalising services and migrating

core applications to the cloud. It is critical these services are secure and perform

well to ensure citizen trust and satisfaction. The challenge is amplified as the

Government seeks to offer joined-up, end-to-end intelligent services across a

variety of agencies, jurisdictions, networks and devices.

This comes as the threat environment continues to escalate and as the

Government looks to rapidly upgrade the security of its networks, infrastructure

and web sites. The efficient and secure management of data across these

systems is a major leadership, governance and technological challenge, requiring

a strong strategic and operational response.

Join us to learn about the development of this response and how leaders

can build resilient agencies and critical on-going capability around this

important digital challenge.

Register here

!


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by Andrew Gunn & Michael

Mintrom | views 817

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