Trump administration enacts another obstacle to asylum cases

Reuters | July 30, 2019

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration imposed another obstacle for asylum-seekers on Monday, finding that being persecuted on the basis of threats against a family member is usually not enough to be granted asylum in the United States. Attorney General William Barr issued a ruling that will set the standard for all immigration judges, using the same power his predecessors Jeff Sessions and Matthew Whitaker used to try to narrow the field of people potentially eligible for asylum.

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EMERGING TECHNOLOGY

ABBYY Expands Strategic Partnerships to Accelerate Modernization of Government Agencies

Businesswire | April 28, 2023

ABBYY today announced it has expanded its partnerships that serve state and local government agencies. Data from the Government Accountability Office revealed that federal IT legacy systems cost over $330 million annually to maintain, while delivering sub-optimal service and carrying risks inherent to older platforms. To address the agencies’ needs to modernize both back-end and consumer-facing IT systems, ABBYY partnerships will expand the accessibility of its intelligent automation solutions to streamline cumbersome processes, enhance citizen experiences and improve the overall ability to meet constituents’ needs. Among ABBYY’s expanded partnerships is MCCi, which was recently named as a company to watch in the annual GovTech 100. MCCi has numerous ongoing initiatives to digitally transform government services, including unemployment and Social Security fraud mitigation and accounts payable automation. The city of Coppell, Texas is among their customers that have successfully automated accounts payable processes using ABBYY intelligent document processing solutions to turn key document insights into efficient outcomes. By leveraging ABBYY technology, Coppell reduced invoice processing time from days to minutes. “Right out of the box, ABBYY intelligent document processing was very impressive,” said Jerod Anderson, director of Enterprise Solutions for the city of Coppell. “We gave it a dozen of our invoices, and it processed with 99% accuracy on 90% of those. It uses machine learning, so once it’s corrected, the next time an invoice from that vendor comes through, ABBYY understands it and will process it with 100% accuracy.” Additionally, MCCi holds a contract with the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) where ABBYY is a part of an approved distributor solution. ABBYY is also approved through several other government contracts, including the State of New York Information Technology Umbrella Contract, the State of California Software License Program, and the NASPO ValuePoint Cooperative Purchasing Contract via Carahsoft. Furthermore, our approval through Carahsoft has enabled state agencies to leverage ABBYY IDP and Proof of Identity in the motor vehicle sector to expedite document review and identity verification and proofing. “Our expanded partnership with ABBYY to serve the public sector is crucial because in many cases paper processes are necessary to provide services to constituents caught in the digital divide,” stated Donny Barstow, CEO of MCCi. “Paper forms do not have to slow modernization efforts. Clients like Coppell, TX are accelerating their adoption of automation technologies because of all the aforementioned drivers and are having proven, repeated success in improving their citizens’ experience.” Bruce Orcutt, SVP of Product Marketing at ABBYY commented, "Agencies in the public sector work with trusted, best-in-breed solutions that are scalable and easy to deploy. We have the expertise to address the growing document-centric challenges of these agencies, especially as rises in unemployment claims increase the need to accelerate processing while mitigating fraud risk. MCCi has deep connections and understands the public sector, enabling them to navigate citizens’ weariness toward poor service experiences. Strategic partnerships like these are instrumental to our growth and contributions in the public sector.” As citizens grow accustomed to exemplary customer experiences provided by Amazon and banking institutions, their expectations of government entities evolve. For example, a recent ABBYY survey identified the top three factors contributing to the public dropping out of registration for government services as taking too much time/too many steps (54%), requiring excessive and repetitive manual entry (50%), and making identity verification too difficult (26%). About ABBYY ABBYY powers intelligent automation. We reimagine the way people work and how companies accelerate business by delivering the intelligence that fuels automation platforms. Our solutions transform enterprise data and empower you with the insights you need to work smarter and faster. We help more than 10,000 companies globally, including many of the Fortune 500, to drive significant impact where it matters most: customer experience, profitability, and competitive advantage. ABBYY is a US-based global company with offices in 14 countries. For more information, visit www.abbyy.com. About MCCi MCCi is a business process automation company that accelerates digital transformation by adding intelligence to your processes. As an IT services company with expertise in delivering end-to-end professional services provider, we provide our clients some of the leading technologies for business process automation, including Laserfiche for content services, Blue Prism and UiPath for robotic process automation, ABBYY for intelligent capture, and One Span for digital signatures. We are a trusted partner to over 1,100 government organizations, including cities, counties, state agencies, special districts, K-12, and higher education and are a proud GovTech 100 company for 2023.

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EMERGING TECHNOLOGY, CYBERSECURITY

Appian Completes IRAP Assessment to Help Australian Government Agencies Automate Their Most Critical Processes

Prnewswire | April 04, 2023

Appian today announced it has completed the Infosec Registered Assessors Program (IRAP), which allows the company to provide cyber security assessment services to Australian government agencies and help them to securely automate their most critical processes. "Appian has a long history of supporting our global base of government customers in heightened security environments. Our IRAP assessment demonstrates our commitment to the Australian public sector and provides additional confidence in using the Appian Platform for their most mission critical business processes," said Jason Adolf, Industry Vice President, Appian. The certification adds to four other new global security certifications for Government achieved in March this year, as well as Appian Protect, which is a new set of security offerings providing trusted data monitoring and end-to-end encryption for cloud and mobile applications, and a whole host of industry-leading compliance accreditations achieved globally. Appian Protect gives Appian customers increased control over their security posture, with top-tier encryption capabilities, 24x7x365 monitoring, and defense-in-depth data protection. "Appian is committed to providing the most trusted platform for complete process automation," said Luke Thomas, Area Vice President Asia Pacific & Japan at Appian. "With our enhanced security offerings, Appian now meets the most rigorous Cloud security and compliance requirements of financial services, healthcare and government agencies." Appian Protect provides access to security features embedded in the Appian Platform, including: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) that alerts on or blocks abnormal user behavior Monitoring with security orchestration and automated response (SOAR) Real-time intrusion detection and monitoring Comprehensive antivirus scans Enterprise-ready authentication and authorisation with single sign-on (SSO) Integration authentication Inbound web API authentication Row-level data fabric security with user access preview Appian has a long history of partnering with Government bodies around the world, dating back to its foundation work in the early 2000s with defense and security agencies. "Appian has an established track record of leading the industry in how sensitive and regulated data is handled, and in easing the burden for organisations needing to prove regulatory compliance," said Michael Beckley, CTO and Founder, Appian. "Our investment in Appian Protect furthers our commitment to the industrial-strength security that enables our customers to achieve significant time and cost savings with confidence." Appian's secure architecture complies with state standards and certifications including SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3, HIPAA, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, Impact Level-5 in US Federal, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and HITRUST. Most recently, the company achieved State Risk and Authorisation Management Program (StateRAMP), Canada Protected B, UK Cyber Essentials Plus, and Spain's National Security Framework accreditations. About Appian Appian is a software company that automates business processes. The Appian Platform includes everything you need to design, automate, and optimize even the most complex processes, from start to finish. The world's most innovative organizations trust Appian to improve their workflows, unify data, and optimize operations—resulting in better growth and superior customer experiences.

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EMERGING TECHNOLOGY, CYBERSECURITY

Ontinue and Carahsoft Partner to Meet the Cybersecurity Needs of Public Sector Organizations

Prnewswire | April 18, 2023

Ontinue, a leading managed detection and response (MDR) provider and winner of the 2022 Microsoft Security MSSP Partner of the Year award, and Carahsoft Technology Corp., The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, today announced a partnership. Under the agreement, Carahsoft will serve as Ontinue's Master Government Aggregator®, making the Ontinue ION managed extended detection and response (MXDR) service available to the Public Sector through Carahsoft's reseller partners, National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance (NCPA) and OMNIA Partners contracts. The Public Sector in the U.S. has been a prime target for cyber criminals. More than 2,300 Local Governments, schools and Healthcare providers were victims of ransomware in 2021. Contributing to the success of these bad actors is the ongoing shortage of cybersecurity professionals, which has prevented many organizations from fully staffing their security operations. "We are excited to partner with Carahsoft and its resellers and systems integrators to address the most complex security needs of Government agencies, Educational institutions and Healthcare providers," said Chris Raniere, Chief Revenue Officer for Ontinue. "This partnership with Carahsoft will make ION MXDR available to these organizations, which struggle to protect themselves with understaffed security teams. MXDR is an ideal solution for these organizations, combining 24/7 monitoring and rapid responsiveness to detect and contain threats early in the cyber kill chain." "The addition of Ontinue's MXDR service to Carahsoft's portfolio provides Public Sector organizations with an award-winning solution to meet their critical security requirements," said Tiffany Goddard, Sales Director who leads the Ontinue Team at Carahsoft. "Working together with Ontinue and our reseller partners, we can help these organizations improve their cybersecurity posture to counter ransomware and other serious threats. In addition to helping customers maximize their existing Microsoft security investments, our joint efforts will also drive further Azure consumption." Ontinue ION sets the new standard for MXDR services. It uniquely delivers Nonstop SecOps with 24/7, always-on protection while increasing overall security program maturity, efficacy and scalability. The ION service brings together the cloud-native ION platform and the ION Cyber Defense Center, a 24/7 globally distributed security operation staffed by experts including the company's teams of Cyber Advisors and Cyber Defenders. The ION platform integrates advanced automation and real-time collaboration capabilities from the recent acquisition of Tiberium, a highly automated managed security services provider based on Microsoft security solutions. These capabilities power several innovations that elevate ION over other MXDR services. Ontinue's ION MXDR service is available through Carahsoft's NCPA Contract NCPA01-86 and OMNIA Partners Contract #R191902. For more information, contact the Ontinue team at Carahsoft at (888) 662-2724 or MicrosoftISV@carahsoft.com. The dedicated Cybersecurity team at Carahsoft specializes in providing Federal, State and Local Government agencies and Education and Healthcare organizations with security solutions to safeguard their cyber ecosystem. To learn more about Carahsoft's Cybersecurity solutions, visit www.carahsoft.com/solve/cybersecurity. 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 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. Visit us at www.carahsoft.com. About Ontinue Ontinue is on a mission to be the most trusted, 24/7, always-on security partner that empowers customers to embrace the future by operating more strategically and with less risk. Grounded in an intelligent, cloud-delivered SecOps platform, Ontinue offers superior protection that goes well beyond basic detection and response services.

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