As federal agencies move their application workloads to the cloud, maintaining compliance and cybersecurity is paramount.

With agencies having hundreds of thousands of endpoints, including desktops, tablets, mobile devices, and the countless different software and operating systems for each, maintaining compliance can be a never-ending challenge. It can also be time-consuming and drain resources as many different IT expert skillsets are needed to maintain compliance for each specific system.

So how do agencies manage compliance drift without scaling up their IT workforce?

iT1 Source (iT1), a Contract Holder on NITAAC Best in Class Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) CIO-CS, has answered that question by leveraging SaltStack, a leading provider of intelligent automation solutions

iT1 creates an agency-specific, customized approach for cloud migration services. They begin by evaluating an agency’s risk through security risk assessments, vulnerability scans, compliance testing and other assessments. Once risks have been identified, iT1 will build an infrastructure tailored to the agency’s needs including architecture and design, cloud network data endpoints application, and identity and access management.

Enter SaltStack.

SaltStack is an intelligent, event-driven, solution that automates patch, configuration, monitoring and compliance automation for Windows, Linux, VMWare, AWS, Azure and other network devices. SaltStack provisions, configures and secures those endpoints to be centrally controlled through an easy-to-use dashboard. SaltStack’s architecture is highly performant and secure, capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of nodes. Through this process, nodes can be configured and managed to agency security standards, including CIS, DISA STIGs, NIST, PCI and other standards requirements.

When coupled with best security practices by the operator, SaltStack can provide security measures at scale, central monitoring and control, and self-healing mechanisms of security measures on a continuous basis, all the way to the end points in a universal fashion (cloud, on-premise, network gateways, switches), which was not technically feasible prior to implementation.

Together, iT1 and SaltStack can take any on-premise (on-prem) data center and build a secure, cloud infrastructure off-premise (off-prem) tailored for the individual agency.

“iT1 brings to the table policy, architecture and implementation for intelligent automation and continuous compliance,” says John Carty, SaltStack Senior Area Director.

If you are considering employing intelligent automation in a cloud environment, iT1 has solutions architects in major cloud platforms including AWS and Microsoft, to assist in your modernization efforts, and has SaltStack Certified Engineers on staff to help guide you in your journey to automating your environment. iT1 will consult on best practices and compliances for your agency to determine which workloads make sense to consider moving from on-prem to off-prem. They will perform a Cloud Readiness Assessment, conduct a team workshop and deploy a “cloud starter kit” that will give you the essential baseline needed for your data migration strategy. 

For your legacy platforms, iT1’s infrastructure engineers have spent decades implementing and supporting leading technology solutions. They have deployed many hybrid solutions for clients requiring both on-prem and off-prem to meet their compliance requirements for government and commercial customers alike. If you need to look where someone has done it before, look no further than the engineering staff at iT1.

Now, more than ever, automating one’s environment can be key to surviving, even thriving, with budget cuts and reduced staff making it more difficult for efficient provisioning, managing change and effectively securing your remote workforce.

“What is the cost of manually remediating compliance and security issues, particularly in the cloud?” asks Carty. “Many of our customers pay for SaltStack simply by consolidating the number of tools they’re using today, resulting in a 60% cost savings."

In thousands of enterprises and agencies around the world, SaltStack is the underlying technology for initiatives such as Infrastructure-as-Code, Continuous Compliance, the Software-Defined-Network, Comply-to-Connect and many others. SaltStack was rated 4.7 out of 5 by Gartner's Peer Review and is a core technology platform for the upcoming National Institute of Standards and Technology special publication, “Patching the Cybersecurity Enterprise.”

Federal agencies can acquire this solution through iT1 Source on the NITAAC Best in Class GWAC CIO-CS.

NITAAC provides any Department of Defense or civilian agency with three Best in Class GWACs to meet virtually every IT need. To learn more about IT automation solutions and services visit nitaac.nih.gov and our Solutions Showcase.