Adopting a Platform Approach for Cloud Security

This article is an excerpt from GovLoop’s recent guide, “Your Guide to Cloud Security in Government Today: Making the Most of FedRAMP.” Download the full guide here.

Government has a remarkable opportunity to modernize technology infrastructures to meet the needs of today’s digitally savvy users. By pivoting to meet these new demands, agencies are able to open up new government services and new channels of connecting, while streamlining their IT programs and saving taxpayer dollars.

Moving to the cloud is one way agencies are transforming. But as different instances of cloud get set up across agencies, siloes are created, and a holistic approach to security can become nearly impossible.

To better understand how using a cloud platform approach can help agencies keep their clouds secure, GovLoop sat down with Paul Tatum, Senior Vice President, Solution Engineering for the Public Sector Business Unit at Salesforce. Salesforce is a leader in cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

Tatum described handling cybersecurity in government like a game of whacka-mole for CIOs and CISOs. “Today, because of legacy technology and infrastructures, agencies are faced with many different siloed systems requiring lots of time, attention, and expense,” he explained. “If a security directive comes out, it is very hard to comply with it holistically. Agencies are attempting to patch, remediate and scan across an impossible combination of legacy systems, technology, software versions.”

This is challenging as the time spent dealing with security in a reactive way means agency IT teams may not be able to work towards meeting mission need.

While government needs to stay secure and compliant, they must also be able to innovate, optimize cost and stay agile in their approaches and development. Setting up an enterprise cloud platform can allow for more freedom, agility and compliance that government needs, while allowing them to leverage and inherit the built-in security and compliances.

One such platform is the Salesforce FedRAMP-authorized Government Cloud. It’s a partitioned instance of salesforce.com’s multitenant public cloud infrastructure, specifically for use by federal, state, and local government customers. It enables organizations to digitally transform the business of government rapidly and revolutionize the citizen experience, all while meeting the regulatory and compliance needs of government.

“We help agencies modernize with our integrated, secure cloud platform, which enables government to cut costs, accelerate mission success and provide a more complete ecosystem for employees, stakeholders and beyond,” said Tatum. Salesforce’s multitenant platform reduces security risks to agencies because their information is managed through a rigorous security monitoring and remediation program aligned with FedRAMP.

“A platform approach can truly be a gamechanger for government cloud security,” Tatum concluded.