Federal Hybrid Work Environments Require a New Approach for Secure Collaboration

While the movement for the federal workforce to return to office continues, agencies must have a collaboration infrastructure that is flexible, scalable, interoperating, resilient and secure to ensure strategic mission readiness.

To accomplish agency mission priorities and better serve their constituencies, federal workers must communicate seamlessly as if they are all in the same room. As agencies grapple with budget constraints, federal managers need to leverage current investments while updating and integrating where possible. This would require an overhaul of conference rooms to address the requirements of today’s workforce.

For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is upgrading conference rooms at its White Oak campus as the agency transitions to a hybrid workforce. In February 2023, FDA staff began returning to the campus for a portion of their time for in-person meetings. To avoid overcrowded conference rooms, core FDA employees with a primary speaking role meet in-person while others join virtually. Over the course of this year, the agency will upgrade conference rooms with new technology, such as noise-canceling, boom-forming microphones and face/conversation tracking video cameras, according to the FDA.

Outdated collaborative technologies and stovepiped legacy investments that do not interoperate further hinder a unified workforce. In-office video conferencing technology was already three- to five-years old when offices closed during the COVID-19 pandemic and now must work with newer technology that workers use to telework. The sheer size of agencies and the vast amounts of legacy systems accumulated over the years present integration challenges. Moreover, agencies are not standardized on one video or web conferencing system and often have two to four different web and video conferencing technologies.

Middleware Bridges the Legacy Technology Gap

This interoperability problem has some unique requirements for the federal government. While different web conferencing solutions can work together in the commercial environment, the federal government has more interoperability issues due to specific security levels and cloud technology adherence to the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), which provides a standardized approach to security authorizations for cloud service offerings.

This begs the question: How can agencies link web conferencing technology together as they modernize their collaboration infrastructure?

Collaboration middleware will help bridge the gap between legacy video conferencing and new technology. Video teleconferencing middleware allows web conferencing systems from different vendors to work together. For example, one such vendor provides an on-prem gateway that connects any video endpoint to web conferencing solutions with interoperability in the cloud. Another solution uses a software-as-a-service (SaaS) hybrid service model, allowing government agencies to maintain operational control of their endpoints and systems without replacing infrastructure.

For instance, officials at a large defense agency with 700 conference rooms wanted to use a leading web conferencing solution but needed to communicate with other agencies, including the White House, that have different web conferencing technology. This would have meant adding more hardware at a high cost. By deploying vendor-agnostic video conferencing middleware, the agency achieved interoperability with other systems and saved money.

Secure Video Conferencing Ensures Secure Collaboration

As agencies adopt zero-trust architectures, it will be imperative to automate policy enforcement, deploy end-to-end encryption and apply machine learning and behavior analysis to network monitoring in order to secure video conferencing and workforce collaboration. By adopting a zero-trust architecture, agencies must ensure they implement policies of least privilege. These policies limit employees’ access to only the data and systems they need to do their jobs, even on their mobile devices.

For more in-depth security across all devices and users, civilian agencies should look to align solutions with the Defense Department’s Comply-to-Connect (C2C) cybersecurity framework. The C2C framework, which is being deployed on classified Secret Internet Protocol Router (SIPR) and unclassified Non-classified Internet Protocol (IP) Router (NIPR) networks, comprises five phases:

· Phase 1: Verify the identity of users and devices before network access is granted.

· Phase 2: Control access to resources based on policy and authorization.

· Phase 3: Obtain visibility into who is connected to the network while providing continuous monitoring.

· Phase 4: Prevent and control malicious activities, such as the propagation of malware, network infiltration, data exfiltration and denial of service.

· Phase 5: Automate breach response and remediate vulnerabilities.

We consider zero trust its own unique culture that must be interwoven with an agency’s existing IT culture to lay a solid foundation for its security architecture. This is even more important when considering hybrid work environments.

Anywhere, Any Device: The Future of Federal Work

Agencies want to deliver the right collaboration experience on any device, including voice, video, messaging, mobility and web conferencing. This will empower staff and other users to engage anywhere using secure solutions.

As federal managers modernize their conference room infrastructure, they must integrate virtual meeting rooms, IP phones and video systems that are affordable and have advanced capabilities. At the same time, they must bring federal employees together using highly scalable voice, video and content-sharing capabilities that provide secure conferencing anywhere to meet new federal work requirements.

John Bowman has been in the Federal IT industry for over 25 years and in 2018, he became Director of ThunderCat’s Collaboration Practice. ThunderCat Technology is a leading solutions partner to the U.S. Government, educational institutions, and commercial companies. Prior to ThunderCat, John was at VBrick Systems for 13 years holding sales and management positions where he left as Vice President of Federal Sales. Prior to VBrick, he worked at various start-ups specializing in video and collaboration technologies including First Virtual Communications, Qwest Digital Media, and Streampipe. John was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland and is a graduate of St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He presently resides in Northern Virginia with his wife Stephanie, their three children, and Charleston, their golden retriever.