WASHINGTON –
Speaking to a crowd of over 250 attendees, Ms. Janice
Glover-Jones, DIA’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) participated in a “CIO
Fireside Chat” at the FedScoop Public Sector Innovation Summit on Tuesday,
April 26, 2016. Participants of the panel also included the Department of
Homeland Security Chief Technology Officer, the Deputy CIO for the Army, and
industry representatives from IBM and VMware.
Panel members discussed a wide range of topics impacting
both the Federal Government and commercial industry to include: cybersecurity,
cloud technology, and workforce development and innovation.
Cybersecurity – “Just
Enough Privileges.” In the area of cybersecurity, Glover-Jones focused her
comments on data tagging and system administrator privileges. Data tagging was
discussed as a way to couple identity access management coupled with data tags,
which are cryptographically bound to the data, to mediate access to the data.
Secondly, she discussed providing “Just Enough Privileges,” “Just-in-Time” to
allow system administrators to do their job without having or maintaining
access to data for an extended period. This reduces the risk and helps prevent a
future insider threat data breach. Other panel members discussed the asymmetric
nature of the cyber threat and noted that, although more money is being
directed toward cybersecurity, our strategies have gone unchanged.
Cloud Computing –
Agility and Speed to Market. Several panel members noted that the key
benefit of moving to a cloud infrastructure is the agility and speed to which
services are delivered to their diverse users. A secondary benefit is cost
savings. Glover-Jones’s comments focused on how the Intelligence Community IT
Enterprise (IC ITE) Cloud is increasing information sharing, information
security, and data analytics across the entire IC.
Innovation – Occurring
at all Levels of the Organization. Glover-Jones stated that innovation can
no longer rely on purchasing new technology. She defines true innovation as,
“Coming up with a new, better way to connect-the-dots to yield a different
outcome, while using your existing resources.” To foster innovation at all
levels of the organization, the she noted that CIO has initiated organizations
and events that are designed to provide the workforce with the knowledge and
forums necessary to think about new approaches to old problems and have method
to communicate those ideas up and across the organization. Examples include the
Culture Club, Innovation PODS, Mission Awareness Briefings for IT
Professionals, a CIO Boot Camp briefing, and an Industry Speaker Series.