GOVERNMENT BUSINESS
CyCognito | December 28, 2021
CyCognito, the leader in external attack surface management and protection, today announced a strategic go-to-market alliance with Carahsoft Technology Corp., the Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®. Under the agreement, Carahsoft will serve as CyCognito’s first Public Sector Distributor. The new relationship expands and deepens CyCognito’s reach across and within the Public Sector through Carahsoft’s NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V, Information Technology Enterprise Solutions – Software 2 (ITES-SW2), OMNIA Partners, National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) ValuePoint, and National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance (NCPA), as well as through Carahsoft’s reseller partners.
“Together with our channel partners, CyCognito is using its platform, program and best practices to help the Public Sector establish a stronger security posture and proactively identify, protect and prevent cyberattacks from happening.”
Channel Chief and CyCognito’s Worldwide Sales Leader Lori Cornmesser
Most of today’s cyberattacks continue to intrude through external attack vectors. CyCognito’s innovative platform automates the discovery, multi-factor security testing and risk prioritization of all externally-exposed assets in an organization’s extended IT ecosystem. Once cyber threats are identified, CyCognito orchestrates data sharing to automatically start the remediation process by creating an incident response ticket. The platform integrates its findings and intelligence into existing vulnerability lifecycle management processes through channels such as Slack, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, and several additional platforms. This proven and proactive layer of automated security ensures an organization’s entire attack surface is protected quickly and efficiently when risks are detected.
“Empowering organizations to find and eliminate the paths attackers easily exploit is a vital tactic within any surface management and protection strategy,” says Rob Gurzeev, Founder and CEO, CyCognito. “Prevention and remediation must remain top of mind for channel partners and IT decision makers, especially those working within the Public Sector where the stakes are high and the impact of a single breach has the potential to span states, the nation and even the globe.”
CyCognito and Carahsoft are enabling forward-thinking security value-added resellers (VARs), managed service providers (MSPs), global systems integrators (GSIs) and managed security services providers (MSSPs) with a new and enhanced lineup of SLED and Federal-focused sales and marketing assets. Offered at no charge, these business-building assets are readily available within CyCognito’s partner portal and include how to market, how to pitch and position, and how to demo the technology.
“Agencies today are under tremendous pressure to protect their customers from cybercrime,” said Michael Shrader, Vice President of Intelligence and Innovative Solutions at Carahsoft. “CyCognito’s leading platform preempts attacks and helps businesses satisfy key elements of most common security frameworks and regulatory compliance standards. We look forward to working with CyCognito and our reseller partners to help educate and better enable the Public Sector with the knowledge, specialization and technology needed to properly assess their cyber risk and eliminate exposure.”
About CyCognito
CyCognito solves one of the most fundamental business problems in cybersecurity: seeing how attackers view your organization, where they are most likely to break in, what systems and assets are at risk and how you can eliminate the exposure. Founded by national intelligence agency veterans, CyCognito has a deep understanding of how attackers exploit blind spots and a path of least resistance. The Palo Alto-based company is funded by leading Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and its mission is to help organizations protect themselves from even the most sophisticated attackers. It does this with a category-defining, transformative platform that automates offensive cybersecurity operations to provide reconnaissance capabilities superior to those of attackers.
About Carahsoft
Carahsoft Technology Corp. is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, supporting Public Sector organizations across Federal, State and Local Government agencies and Education and Healthcare markets. As the Master Government Aggregator® for our vendor partners, we deliver solutions for Cybersecurity, MultiCloud, DevSecOps, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Open Source, Customer Experience and Engagement, and more. Working with resellers, systems integrators and consultants, our sales and marketing teams provide industry leading IT products, services and training through hundreds of contract vehicles.
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GOVERNMENT BUSINESS
DataRobot | January 19, 2022
AI Cloud leader DataRobot today released its State of AI Bias Report, conducted in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and global academic leaders. The report offers a deeper understanding of how the risk of AI bias can impact today’s organizations, and how business leaders can manage and mitigate this risk. Based on an exploration of over 350 organizations across industries, the research findings reveal that many leaders share deep concerns around the risk of bias in AI (54%) and a growing desire for government regulation to prevent bias in AI (81%).
AI is an essential technology to accelerate business growth and drive operational efficiency, yet many organizations struggle to implement AI effectively and fairly at scale. More than one in three (36%) organizations surveyed have experienced challenges or direct business impact due to an occurrence of AI bias in their algorithms, such as:
Lost revenue (62%)
Lost customers (61%)
Lost employees (43%)
Incurred legal fees due to a lawsuit or legal action (35%)
Damaged brand reputation/media backlash (6%)
“DataRobot’s research shows what many in the artificial intelligence field have long-known to be true: the line of what is and is not ethical when it comes to AI solutions has been too blurry for too long. “The CIOs, IT directors and managers, data scientists, and development leads polled in this research clearly understand and appreciate the gravity and impact at play when it comes to AI and ethics.”
Kay Firth-Butterfield, Head of AI and Machine Learning, World Economic Forum
While organizations want to eliminate bias from their algorithms, many are struggling to do so effectively. The research found that 77% of organizations had an AI bias or algorithm test in place prior to discovering bias. Despite significant focus and investment in removing AI bias across the industry, organizations still struggle with many clear challenges to eliminating bias:
Understanding the reasons for a specific AI decision
Understanding the patterns between input values and AI decisions
Developing trustworthy algorithms
Determining what data is used to train AI
“The market for responsible AI solutions will double in 2022,” wrote Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Brandon Purcell in his report Predictions 2022: Artificial Intelligence. Purcell continues, “Responsible AI solutions offer a range of capabilities that help companies turn AI principles such as fairness and transparency into consistent practices. Demand for these solutions will likely double next year as interest extends beyond highly regulated industries into all enterprises using AI for critical business operations.”
DataRobot’s Trusted AI Team of subject-matter experts, data scientists and ethicists are pioneering efforts to build transparent and explainable AI with businesses and industries across the globe. Led by Ted Kwartler, VP of Trusted AI at DataRobot, the team’s mission is to deliver ethical AI systems and actionable guidance for a customer base that includes some of the largest banks in the world, top U.S. health insurers, and defense, intelligence, and civilian agencies within the U.S. federal government.
"The core challenge to eliminate bias is understanding why algorithms arrived at certain decisions in the first place,” said Kwartler. “Organizations need guidance when it comes to navigating AI bias and the complex issues attached. There has been progress, including the EU proposed AI principles and regulations, but there's still more to be done to ensure models are fair, trusted and explainable.”
Methodology
DataRobot surveyed more than 350 U.S. and U.K.-based CIOs, IT directors, IT managers, data scientists, and development leads who use or plan to use AI. The research was fielded in 2021.
About DataRobot
DataRobot AI Cloud is the next generation of AI. DataRobot’s AI Cloud vision is to bring together all data types, all users, and all environments to deliver critical business insights for every organization. DataRobot is trusted by global customers across industries and verticals, including a third of the Fortune 50.
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GOVERNMENT BUSINESS
Ventech Solutions | May 25, 2022
Ventech Solutions, Inc. has been recognized in the 2022 FedHealthIT Innovation Awards for its support of the 1135 Waiver/Flexibility Request and Public Health Emergency Inquiry Helpdesk Tool for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ).
Nominated and selected by a panel of current and former federal and industry leaders from across the federal IT sector, these programs are chosen for driving technology innovation and results within the federal health IT space.
To be recognized for delivering an innovative technology solution that better serves our medical community and government in times of an emergency is quite an honor. We're thrilled to be able to partner with our client and deliver a successful outcome and tool that solves a vital need to the public, and we congratulate CMS-CCSQ on the award."
Tonia Bleecher, Chief Executive Officer for Ventech Solutions
Using the ServiceNow platform and as a ServiceNow Premier level partner in sales, services and the public sector, Ventech Solutions developed a new publicly accessible web-based portal for submissions of 1135 waivers of the Social Security Act that are used in a disaster or emergency by hospitals, medical providers and state agencies.
Ventech Solutions also supports CMS by operating and maintaining CCSQ's QualityNet website, which provides healthcare quality improvement news, resources and data reporting tools and applications used by healthcare providers, through the Health Care Quality Information Systems (HCQIS) Infrastructure and Data Center Support (HIDS) contract. CCSQ's mission is to improve healthcare outcomes, beneficiary experience of care and population health, while reducing healthcare costs. Ventech Solutions leads design and development teams for ServiceNow, cloud computing, infrastructure automation and DevSecOps delivery. The QualityNet infrastructure and network support major application environments to collect clinical data and measure quality of care for CMS beneficiaries.
Ventech Solutions will join the awardees at the 8th Annual FedHealthIT Innovation Awards on June 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C.
About Ventech Solutions
Ventech Solutions is a technology and healthcare solutions provider that leverages emerging technologies to deliver a wide range of enterprise services including cloud modernization, infrastructure, data, security and service integration support. Ventech Solutions leads and manages some of the most critical technology transformation initiatives for the public sector that empower government agencies to achieve their missions.
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