IBM Creating Center for Government Cybersecurity to Advance Protection Against Threats

IBM is working with internal experts and external advisers to establish the IBM Center for Government Cybersecurity.

The center will serve as a collaborative environment that will help U.S. government agencies tackle existing and future threats to cyber infrastructure.

The center will host events that will focus on the government’s technology priorities, including zero-trust frameworks and cloud security, IBM said in a June 2 press release.

The creation of the government cybersecurity center follows recent attacks such as the SolarWinds and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incidents, which have shown that the threat landscape has crossed over from the digital to the physical world.

Through the center, which is planned to be housed at company offices in Washington, D.C., IBM research labs will collaborate with federal institutions on the future of encryption.

The facility will include laboratory space, where government customers can work together on solutions that will tackle security threats using insights from IBM’s technology and service demonstration.

Initial sessions that will be facilitated through the upcoming center will focus on topics such as hybrid cloud security challenges for data portability. 

IBM security architects seek to demonstrate the use of trusted execution environments, containers and open standards for hybrid cloud designs that are aimed at protecting government data against cybersecurity threats, the company noted. 

The advisory group on the Government Cybersecurity Center includes Tony Scott, former U.S. chief information officer, Curt Dukes, former information security and cybersecurity lead at the National Security Agency, and Kiersten Todt, cybersecurity adviser during the Obama administration.