Securing the Cloud at Your Level

As we prepare for GovLoop’s first-ever State and Local Innovators Virtual Summit, we and the presenters are posting blogs about many of the sessions and some of the tips they will share. The summit is October 22nd and free for everyone — make sure to register here!  

The benefits of the cloud are well understood at this point. In fact, many state and local governments are moving their services to the cloud, with email being one of the most popular. However, there’s still a big elephant in the room when it comes to cloud: the issues of security and privacy.

Although there will always be security concerns when it comes to cloud, there are ways to mitigate your risk. And it starts by understanding your data priorities and the top threats and risks. It also starts with following other organizations that are doing it well. Enter: State of Delaware.

The State of Delaware embraced the cloud fairly early on as an alternative to traditional IT delivery models. According to former CIO Jim Stills in an interview with Government Technology:

“We are seeing benefits including cost savings, enhanced scalability, agility, and rapid delivery. However, it also reduces control and introduces new risks that need to be managed. The decision to turn over data to a third party is not one we take lightly, which is the reason we developed a specific set of “Cloud and Offsite Hosting Terms and Conditions”. This has been used extensively as part of our business case vetting and has become a useful tool to dialogue with the vendor.”

Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information has gone through multiple cloud and hosting policy iterations. It’s helped them ensure that their information is protected and that as they go to third party vendors, they are minimizing their risks. Over the last several years, they’ve learned a lot and lucky for us, Tony Collins, Enterprise Architect, State of Delaware is joining our training, “Securing the Cloud at Your Level” to share those lessons learned.

In this training, which is taking place on October 22nd from 10:30-11:20AM ET, we’ll discuss best practices and lessons learned from state and local organizations that have successfully implemented the cloud. Specifically, you’ll learn:

• The top questions to ask when making the business case for implementing cloud solutions.
• Case studies of organizations that moved to the cloud — what they did, how and why.
• Processes and tools that are already in place to help you secure your data.

As many states adopt “cloud-first” strategies, it’s important to proactively address security issues. This training will help you ask the right questions to keep the data and privacy of your citizens and employees safe. In addition to Tony Collins, David Blankenhorn, Vice President of Engineering and Chief Cloud Technologist.

“Securing the Cloud at Your Level”  is part of GovLoop’s State and Local Innovators Virtual Summit, an all-day, virtual event with 6 different online trainings, networking opportunities and resources to help you do your job better. It takes place on October 22nd. You can see the schedule and register here for free. You can earn up to 6 CPEs by attending, so be sure to register!