Managing IoT devices in the federal government

Federal Tech Talk

Managing IoT devices in the federal government

Ellen Sundra, vice president of Americas, Systems Engineering at ForeScout Technologies, joins host John Gilroy on this week's Federal Tech Talk to discuss the NIST...

December 17, 2018 5:33 pm

< a min read

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This week on Federal Tech Talk, host John Gilroy interviews Ellen Sundra, vice president of Americas, Systems Engineering at ForeScout Technologies.

Head shot of Ellen Sundra — Ellen Sundra, ForeScout Technologies

The discussion focuses on concepts related to managing IoT devices for federal agencies. Sundra expands on topics like the NIST cyber framework, CDM and C2C programs, and the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.

She started off the interview with the logical starting point — finding out what is on your network. Sundra talked about agencies that performed this basic task and discovered many unknown devices, some reports indicate up to 60% more than previously known.

With ForeScout, this process it done through something called “agent-less visibility.” Essentially, an agent is an installed piece of code while an agent-less method incorporates uses controls already on a systems IT servers.

Sundra expands on this concept with describing how network segmentation and endpoint compliance help network administrators get a handle on the entire system.