Authentic8 Blog Category: Federal

Ideas That Become Obvious In Hindsight

Posted by: Gerd Meissner
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Interview: Authentic8 Co-founder and CEO Scott Petry on Leo Laporte's TWiT.tv

Were you excited when Apple presented the Newton mobile device to the world, a glimpse into a future starring the iPhone? Or perhaps relieved when the email Spam Wars were won by Postini, a Silicon Valley startup later bought by Google, where it became the core of Gmail?

The ideas and concepts that drove both breakthrough innovations initially faced ridicule (in the case of Newton) and skepticism. What they have in common is that today, they are obvious in hindsight.

What they also share is a name: Scott Petry. His career took him from Apple's Newton team to founding and later selling Postini - which solved the email spam problem - to Google and from there to his current role as Co-founder and CEO of Authentic8, which pioneered remote browser isolation in the cloud.

Do we have a theme here? Leo Laporte thinks so. The award-winning tech journalist and founder

DoD's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification: Are Smaller Companies Prepared?

Posted by: Abel Vandegrift
Published on:

New requirements mean contractors will have to pay to play. What does this mean for small businesses in the defense industry?

The cybersecurity posture of the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) supply chain is only as strong as its weakest contractor. When considering the DIB supply chain includes 300,000 contractors with sensitive government data, and around 290,000 of them are not subject to strict cybersecurity requirements or oversight, something needs to change.

Leading that change is the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment - OUSD(A&S) - which has developed the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), an agile set of unified cybersecurity standards to ensure the security of government data on DIB networks.

Illustration for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification blog post: CMMS Seal

Illustration: CMMC Seal

CMMC will enable the government to verify contractors have adequate security protocols in place to protect non-public Federal Contract Information and more sensitive Controlled Unclassified Information.

How CMMC Aims to Unify Cybersecurity  

The most recent draft version of

Operation “Shields Up”: Web Isolation in the U.S. Military

Posted by: Sean Heritage
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How can government organizations, private enterprises, and academic institutions minimize the cybersecurity and privacy risks associated with accessing the internet from desktop or mobile devices?

Valuable pointers come from the defense sector. A new case study, titled Shields Up: How a Military Unit Simultaneously Increased Network Access and Decreased Cyber Risk [PDF], showcases how Authentic8's remote browser isolation technology enabled a U.S. military unit to implement internet policies for personal web access, without increasing the risk of introducing any malware or malicious code into the unclassified network.

The growing need to access publicly available information (PAI) on the web and to leverage the internet for both official and personal business (check out my post on "morale browsing") is making secure access to the broader network a necessity for more military personnel.

"Shields Up" shows how remote browser isolation with Silo Cloud Browser is supporting this change process. Silo enables and secures responsible web use in organizations for which the security risks

Morale: Recruitment, Retention, and Browsing

Posted by: Sean Heritage
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During my tenure as the Commanding Officer of the Navy’s defensive cyberspace operations team, I distinctly remember an exit interview with a civilian teammate. He sat across from me and proudly stated that though he loved our team, he was ready to leave and willing to take a pay cut for the opportunity ahead of him (note: he wasn’t taking a pay cut, but he was willing to).

He enjoyed his teammates, he told me, appreciated his leadership, was motivated by our mission, and felt appropriately compensated. Given that dissatisfaction - and not satisfaction - with any one of those job aspects usually serves as reason people decide to look elsewhere for employment, I was perplexed.

My departing teammate went on to explain: “I am a geek. I love technology. I want to be on a team that uses the latest and greatest hardware and software. I want to be able to connect with the outside world from my desktop.

The Gift of Access

Posted by: Sean Heritage
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I have spent the bulk of my Navy career working to inspire transformational change both at the unit and enterprise levels. Though my navy career is over, I remain committed to helping others do the same. I recently read Greg Satell’s Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change, and was once again reminded that driving change within an organization is both art and science.

Many people think Authentic8’s Silo platform is a browser for the zero trust web. It most certainly is that and so much more.

After serving within the core of the Department of Defense for years, the new collaboration tools I had at my disposal as a member of the Defense Innovation Unit blew my mind. I say ‘new’ not because they were new, as they were the very tools that the private sector has been using for years - webmail, video conferencing, file sharing, and work management platforms. They were ‘new’ to me