Government agencies modernizing network infrastructure must balance the ability to deliver new services with the cost of supporting legacy applications and infrastructure.
Cyber security, automation, and agile service delivery are all key components for successful mission response. Accelerating progress requires a simpler network infrastructure that supports both legacy and modern technology. Modernizing IT and communications infrastructure can enable automation, improve performance, and assure cyber resiliency.
Leverage the network as a cyber defense tool. With Software Defined Networking (SDN), various points in the cyber event chain—breach, reconnaissance, and exploitation—become both an indicator of events and a response mechanism.
Enable automation and service agility with an SDN-driven service orchestrator that automates provisioning of services across network layers, infrastructure vendors, and domains, while reducing overall operations costs.
Build future-proof infrastructure to modernize networks with a converged packet-optical solution that can support multiple layers in a single platform, replace end-of-life equipment, and upgrade bandwidth while still supporting legacy systems and applications.
Innovating network modernization requires rethinking the architecture. Ciena’s Adaptive Network™ is a network end-state that enables agencies to optimize existing frameworks while incorporating new technologies and ways of working. It’s built on a combination of hardware, software, and services to meet complex mission demands and transform the business of government with greater agility. This allows for more efficient and effective delivery of government services and enhanced inter-agency collaboration. IT modernization is inevitable as new technology, skills, and expectations continue to rise.
Cyber attacks are inevitable. The government has an enormous task of constantly defending itself against individual and nation-backed attackers. In a recent survey by KPMG, only 67 percent of respondents believe that their agencies can appropriately detect or respond appropriately. While most cybersecurity strategies center on users and applications, protecting the network and in-flight data is a critical component of a holistic security strategy.
A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office study found that 75 percent of IT investments are still being allocated to fund existing operations and maintenance activities. Spending on these activities increased from fiscal years 2010 to 2017. While many government agencies have focused on adoption of cloud-based services to consolidate and modernize common applications such as email and collaboration tools, many agencies still struggle to budget for optimizing infrastructure.
The delivery of government services is changing dramatically as more activities are becoming self-service. From tax payments to benefits to the legal system, the digitization of government services lowers the cost of delivering services, dramatically improves responsiveness and satisfaction, and enables greater collaboration within and across government entities.
In the federal government space, mandates and initiatives to improve cyber readiness and optimize application sharing and collaboration have resulted in cloud and virtualization initiatives. Designed to provide a more efficient, modernization-ready environment, these initiatives are gaining steady momentum.
It’s no longer sufficient to expand and overlay legacy networks. These networks prolong service delivery times, require increasing operational costs for maintenance, and challenge the ability to maintain cyber resiliency. Network operators’ ability to pivot to network modernization often gets mired in outdated resources and budget realities. But innovating in the cyber domain doesn’t require a complete network overhaul or a disruptive shift in network design.
Ciena’s innovation for the cyber domain gives network and IT leaders new approaches to:
Today’s agency networks are strategic mission assets, and IT modernization must balance cost- and performance-optimization with cyber resiliency. We’ve worked with government agencies, global enterprises, and carriers to architect infrastructure to converge network layers, simplify network management, support the migration of legacy TDM/ SONET applications, and create a programmable, mission-responsive platform for today’s and tomorrow’s mission networks.
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