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SECURED WORLD

Towards a SECURED WORLD

We’ve entered a new decade but one thing that hasn’t changed is breaches of security and hackers trying to penetrate your firewalls. While personal devices can certainly reveal a glut of information – credit card numbers and passwords, in particular – the real spoils go to those who can break into government networks. In addition to agencies having to navigate their way around everyday problems involving connectivity and protection of sensitive data, they are also tasked with protecting private information of our citizens like SSNs, or in some cases, secret information we all rely on for safety and security.
Despite this, the allotted budgets have not proportionally grown even while the threats and challenges have; the available resources dwindle but the increase in regulations never do.
IT-CNP is here to solve that very challenge. Based in Columbia, Maryland as one of the first national providers of FISMA-compliant, FedRAMP certified cloud hosting in the country, IT-CNP has been consulting on governmental hosting and security challenges for over 20 years now. Today it is still one of the few firms in the country to exclusively serve government agencies, whether Federal, state, or local.
IT-CNP’s cloud division, GovDataHosting, formed shortly after the parent company’s opening, provides policy development, compliance and audits, disaster recovery, and incident response along with any other bespoke cloud solutions an agency could need.
Competition and cyber-attacks have something in common: they are a 24/7 game and both in full supply on the governmental side. To win coveted government contracts (and keep them when the re-compete comes), a company has to always be on the ball.
“GovDataHosting provides a cloud service that is completely managed for both ease and peace of mind to government agencies ranging from defense and military to healthcare,” said Alen Dalton, Program Manager of Professional Services.
A normal week at IT-CNP includes the successful hosting and management of mission-critical systems in the cloud. Every datacenter and the personnel staffing them, along with customer data, are located and monitored within U.S. borders. All employees are subject to a criminal background checks when hired and anyone working with sensitive information undergoes a government-sponsored background investigation. That’s how much safety of sensitive customer data matters.
“GovDataHosting was awarded a FISMA High Authority to Operate (ATO) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in late 2019 to provide cloud hosting services for the HHS Office of the Secretary, a high honor,” said Mr. Dalton. In the past, IT-CNP also helped to successfully transition an HHS data warehouse to the cloud by planning all technical and security compliance impacted tasking including authorization to store Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Protected Health Information (PHI) in accordance with FedRAMP, FISMA, HIPAA and HHS regulations.
IT-CNP’s services are similarly available on several prenegotiated government contract vehicles, including GSA Multiple Award Schedule, NOAA NMITS, DoD ACCENT, and DHS-Eagle II. Being a vendor of the U.S. Army ACCENT Program also allows GovDataHosting to migrate applications and provide cloud hosting for the entire Department of Defense. “We are proud to serve DoD agencies, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Marine Corps as they serve the country, said Mr. Dalton.
As the unique needs of the security services sector continue to evolve, IT-CNP has initiated plans to extend its cybersecurity solutions and FedRAMP cloud services into the southwestern parts of the country.
The horizon is vastly open when it comes to cloud and related technology. Not so long ago, ‘the cloud’ was hard to comprehend, as if it were part of a science fiction movie; now it permeates daily life from the government down to where you store the vacation photos taken on your phone. Next comes edge computing and then from that, fog computing. Everyone is aware of buzzwords such as the internet of things (IoT) and machine learning.
Where are we going in this new decade? Automation of rapid cloud technical and security setup is going to be the highlight. But cybersecurity is not going anywhere. We have already seen an upward trend of attempted hacks and growing ransoms demanded of government entities and private organizations. Perhaps we will see a combination of automation and cyber to cover the gaps that have thus far been vulnerable.