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We’ll turn now to that conversation with Wanda Jones Heath, principal cyber adviser of the Department of the Air Force, Dan Gunlycke, Technical Director of the Naval Quantum Computing Program Office, Dept. of Navy, and Jim Matney, VP of defense strategy for GDIT.

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But getting the right capabilities in the cloud is critical, says Derek Strausbaugh, mission team leader for the Department of Defense at Microsoft Federal, in a recent podcast produced by Scoop News Group for DefenseScoop and underwritten by Microsoft Federal.

Strausbaugh shared that the questions he often hears about deploying a secure classified cloud computing environment mostly revolve around authorization, access and capability.

This involves understanding who authorized different types of classified information to be supported in selected clouds, who has access to that information or environment, and what capabilities can be implemented in clouds at different access levels.

“Classified programs are just by their very nature used to limitations in terms of getting access to commercial capabilities…and a lot of that is understandable because of the risk posture of these networks and what they protect,” shared Strausbaugh.

This is why Microsoft considered a different approach to building out their secret and top-secret clouds, he explained.

“First is capability. So, having access to a cloud with a commitment to parity with commercial services. Also, performance and having the most direct path to connecting to our cloud or using our cloud within the classified community,” he elaborated. “And then access. How do we make the Azure Clouds built for secret and top-secret workloads accessible to the users in these classified cloud communities?”

He touches on an example of the edge compute projects they are working on, ensuring that the tactical community and operational teams have an enterprise component and can take the cloud component with them when they go out into the field.

Learn more about how defense organizations can build robust cloud capabilities to support mission activities.

Listen to the entire podcast conversation on FedScoop.com. And hear more of our latest coverage on IT developments across the federal government by subscribing to The DefenseScoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and Stitcher.

This podcast was produced by Scoop News Group, for DefenseScoop, and underwritten by Microsoft.

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Sharon Woods, the director of the HaCC, joins the DefenseScoop podcast to discuss the latest on the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, what the center has in store next, and much more.

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Leaning into the expertise of cloud partners can better prepare defense organizations to leverage different capabilities each cloud environment offers, according to Bryan Thomas, managing director for the Department of Defense at Google Public Sector, in a recent podcast interview for DefenseScoop, produced by Scoop News Group and underwritten by Google for Government.

Thomas elaborated on some key capabilities distinguishing Google Cloud from other cloud providers in the space, starting with the unique way the platform has been engineered.

“Instead of building out a government cloud with separate data centers, Google took a different approach to our IL2 to IL5 accreditation,” he explained, sharing that the company did a logical separation of its data centers with its network capabilities versus a physical separation in order to provide true commercial cloud capabilities with workloads that have compliance needs.

He notes that in his conversations with those organizations doubling down on digital and data transformation, there is a particular interest in modernizing applications to better connect with APIs and connect to data points so that AI-assisted applications will have the desired outcome.

“Google, as an organization, is leaning into this conversation commercially, globally and within our products. We are preparing our Department of Defense customers to look at our AI principles and to partner with us to think about what their principles need to be to protect the data for the DOD.”

He also stresses the importance of security in the cloud as more applications and data become integrated into these modern environments. Google’s deep history in zero trust is a strong differentiating factor from other providers; according to Thomas,

“I think Google is one of the [commercial] superpowers of security right now…Starting with Google’s network infrastructure and sub-sea cables that are running around the globe and run this zero-trust architecture.”

He states how Google’s 10 consumer applications — including search, Gmail, YouTube and Pixel — are running over a billion users per application and leveraging zero-trust architecture to ensure all consumer-based products and cloud solutions, including Google Cloud Platform, are secure and our customer’s data is their data.

There’s a lot we’ve invested into our security portfolio in addition to that, including our Mandiant acquisition solutions, automatic threat detection and our security command center.

Listen to the full podcast conversation and learn more about data-driven capabilities to transform DOD cloud capabilities.

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This podcast was produced by Scoop News Group, for DefenseScoop, and underwritten by Google for Government.

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The DOD is gaining momentum in its use of AI and there are numerous opportunities on the horizon that can help defense agencies expand business process automation. That includes tasks like automating software deployment to debug code faster, integrating visual inspection applications to help maintain and monitor facilities or the application of AI patterns across remote sensing, according to Harvey.

“Where I’m most excited about the impact to service members, and federal employees as a whole really, in productivity gains.”

He explained that generative AI and large language models both have robust technical use cases for large scale document processing automation, tasks that can be viewed as “quick wins” for productivity, like the creation of documentation, conversational search, or even code creation tools.

For example, Google recently launched a product called Duet AI for developers, that can help developers complete and augment their code to help them to build relevant mission ready systems in a shorter amount of time.

“Also, we are super excited about how the DOD can leverage Google Distributed Cloud Hosted (GDCH) to move the mission forward,” Harvey said.

“A lot of times, hyperscale services aren’t available because of limited connectivity environments or isolated infrastructures, or the need to meet requirements like Impact Level 6. So, GDCH is delivering key components of Google Cloud on a stack that can meet some of those isolated environments,” he explained.

“Technologies like Kubernetes, or some of Google’s AI training models —like translation and speech to text — can further enhance the capabilities outside of the commercial cloud and either be connected to our cloud services or in a disconnected model.”

Harvey touched on Google’s long-standing focus on being an AI-first company, based on its responsible AI principals.

“We continue to update those every year as we identify new technology trends or societal impacts to make sure that we are shaping where our company is going from an AI perspective, and where we can help developers and the broader AI community.”

Listen to the full podcast to learn more about leveraging generative AI and cloud capabilities to advance DOD operations.

 Also, learn from more of our government leaders on their strategies to Accelerate the Mission with AI and Security.

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This podcast was produced by Scoop News Group, for DefenseScoop, and underwritten by Google for Government.

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Leslie Beavers, principal deputy CIO for the Department of Defense, delivered the closing keynote at the event and showcased the work the Pentagon is doing in cybersecurity, digital transformation and modernization. Listen now to Beavers’ closing FedTalk.

As the Defense Department continues to modernize its cloud environment, leaders are looking at ways to bring cloud-enabled tools to service men and women in the field. Joining the Defense Scoop Podcast today is John Harvey, Customer Engineering Manager at Google to talk about how the DOD is using AI-embedded tools to support its service members in the field.

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