The Case for Cyber Insurance in State Government
State governments handle massive volumes of sensitive data, making cyber risk a top priority. More than half of the states (53%) already carry commercial cyber insurance, supplementing mandatory supplier coverage. Effective policies require coordinated input from CIOs, CISOs, procurement and risk teams to assess gaps and define insurance requirements. A layered strategy—combining self‑insurance, pooled risk and vendor warranties—provides multiple funding sources for rapid incident response.
How Real-Time Crime Centers Draw on Video Surveillance
DeKalb County, Georgia, opened a Real‑Time Crime Center (RTCC) on Dec. 15 as part of its Digital Shield initiative, deploying over 230 live Flock cameras, 270 license‑plate readers and a 32‑by‑4‑foot digital wall that aggregates feeds from Axon Fusus, state DOT...
What Is Configuration Drift, and How Can Governments Manage It?
Configuration drift—unintended divergence from approved cloud baselines—is emerging as a top security risk for state and local governments adopting hybrid and multicloud environments. The drift stems from manual tweaks, rapid automated updates, and fragmented governance across diverse platforms. IBM’s CTO...
Regional Collaboration: The Overlooked Layer in Government IT
U.S. government technology leaders face rising cyber threats, talent shortages, and increasingly complex service platforms. While national associations and state bodies provide some coordination, they leave a gap for peers operating under similar geographic and regulatory conditions. A regional collaboration...
Connecticut’s CISO Pushes a Unified, Outcome-Driven Cyber Strategy
Connecticut’s chief information security officer Gene Meltser warned that tool sprawl, not lack of technology, is the state’s biggest cyber risk. He advocated a unified, identity‑centric security stack that emphasizes risk reduction over product count. By consolidating overlapping solutions and...
State Lotteries Make a Safe Bet With Cloud and AI
U.S. state lotteries, which have generated more than $644 billion for public programs, are rapidly digitizing through cloud platforms and artificial intelligence. Agencies like the Virginia and Arizona lotteries have moved core systems to AWS GovCloud and Google Workspace, gaining redundancy,...
Observability Is the Foundation of Trust in Modern Government
State and local governments face increasingly intricate IT ecosystems that blend legacy platforms, cloud services, security tools, and emerging AI. Traditional monitoring only flags failures, while observability delivers real‑time insight into system behavior, root causes, and future risk. By correlating...
How State and Local Governments Are Securing the 2026 Midterm Elections
Los Angeles County processed roughly one billion network events during the 2024 election, leveraging AI to filter threats and enforce a zero‑trust, air‑gapped architecture for vote‑counting machines. The county also deployed Cradlepoint E3000 routers with NetCloud Manager to create secure, carrier‑agnostic...
Data Security Posture Management Has Become Essential for Governments
State and local governments are rapidly expanding multicloud environments and adopting generative AI, yet many lack clear visibility into where sensitive citizen data resides. Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) emerges as a solution, continuously discovering, classifying, and monitoring data across...
Review: Rubrik Security Cloud Helps Agencies Build Data Resilience
Rubrik Security Cloud offers state and local governments a zero‑trust, immutable backup platform that combines data‑observability with rapid cyber‑recovery. Its architecture stores unalterable backups, detects anomalies across on‑prem, cloud and SaaS workloads, and automates restoration of clean data. The solution...
5 Questions About the Role of Code in Modern Government IT
Modern code practices are reshaping state and local government IT by introducing modular, cloud‑ready architectures that boost scalability, security, and innovation. Agencies can rapidly expand capacity during emergencies, embed DevSecOps and AI‑driven code assessments to curb vulnerabilities, and leverage low‑code...
Q&A: Hartford CIO Charisse Snipes on AI, Language Access and Building a Smart City Culture
Charisse Snipes, Hartford’s Chief Innovation Officer, says the city prioritized AI governance before rollout, embedding data ownership, security and cross‑department training into its framework. Partnering with Google Cloud, Hartford added real‑time, two‑way translation to its 311 system, supporting up to...
How State and Local Agencies Balance Digital Transformation With Printing
Cerritos, California, is modernizing its municipal operations while maintaining a fleet of 112 printers to support essential paper‑based workflows. The city standardized on HP all‑in‑one multifunction devices for speed, security and low waste, and has reduced print volume through digital...
Review: Google Workspace Secures Data and Scales To Meet the Moment
Google Workspace, formerly G Suite, is praised for its ease of deployment and robust collaboration tools that help government employees work across dispersed locations. The suite combines Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet, Chat and AI‑driven features like Gemini and Notebook LM, delivering productivity...
Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange: Smarter Patching for State and Local IT Teams
The Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) is a machine‑readable format that lets software vendors declare whether a CVE actually affects a product. By delivering exploitability data—affected, not affected, fixed, or under investigation—VEX enables state and local government IT teams to filter...
Government IT Efficiency Starts With Rethinking Code, Infrastructure and the Edge
State and local governments can boost IT efficiency by overhauling three pillars: legacy code, infrastructure spending, and edge computing. Outdated, siloed applications inflate maintenance budgets, while open‑source and platform consolidation can slash costs and improve citizen services. Flexible cloud governance...
How AI Is Transforming the Modern Firewall for State and Local Government
State and local governments are adopting a hybrid‑mesh firewall model that spreads enforcement across branch offices, cloud workloads, data centers and remote users. AI is being embedded directly into these firewalls to govern generative‑AI usage, enforce data‑loss‑prevention, and automate rule‑set...
Camera Registries Can Support Public-Private Collaboration
City officials and private businesses are adopting camera‑registry programs to streamline video evidence collection for investigations. Registrants voluntarily share camera locations, enabling police to map assets and request footage through secure cloud portals. Coupled with digital evidence‑management platforms, agencies gain...
What Is Continuous Threat Exposure Management? A Risk-Driven Approach for State and Local Agencies
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is emerging as a risk‑driven framework for state and local governments, shifting focus from sheer vulnerability counts to business‑impact exposure. CDW outlines a five‑stage process—scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization—that integrates asset inventory, threat data,...
Phoenix Taps Adobe DX To Unify Websites, Streamline Services
Phoenix consolidated 44 department websites into a single phoenix.gov portal using Adobe Experience Manager, completing a four‑year transformation that shifted the site to a resident‑first model. The new platform lets roughly 60 departments manage content directly, cutting page‑update times from...
What Transformational Government Looks Like When the Buzzwords Fade
State and local governments are urged to prioritize foundational work—standardization and modernization—before chasing AI and automation. CDW experts Neil Graver and Steve Horvath argue that aligning people, processes, and platforms reduces legacy debt and improves citizen services. They stress human‑centered...
The NIST OSCAL Framework for State and Local Governments
NIST’s Open Security Controls Assessment Language (OSCAL) gives state and local governments a machine‑readable alternative to spreadsheets, Word files, and PDFs for security‑control documentation. By encoding controls, implementations, and assessment results in JSON, XML or YAML, agencies can automate validation,...
How AI Service Hubs Will Redefine Citizen Interactions in 2026
Governments are moving beyond simple AI chatbots toward AI service hubs that connect conversational interfaces directly to back‑office systems, allowing citizens to complete full transactions in one interaction. These hubs promise greater accessibility, multilingual support, and equity by delivering services...
State and Local Governments Can Avoid Costly Mistakes in Application Modernization
State and local governments are accelerating application modernization without fully assessing security and interdependencies, leading some to halt cloud migrations. CDW’s chief architect Greg Peters warns that legacy mainframes and tightly coupled applications require coordinated upgrades across multiple systems. To...
Identity Is the New Perimeter for State Government Cybersecurity
State and local governments are shifting from perimeter‑based defenses to an identity‑first security model, as highlighted in the State CIO Top 10 Priorities for 2026. The article argues that who a user—or nonhuman account—is matters more than where they connect,...
Utah Advances Policy-First Digital Identity Framework Centered On Individual Control
Utah is drafting comprehensive State‑Endorsed Digital Identity (SEDI) legislation that puts individuals in control of their cryptographic keys while the government acts only as an endorser. The policy relies on open standards, supports both long‑lived and short‑term credentials, and preserves...