Video Interview: GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks Talks Cybersecurity & Government Tech Market Trends

In today’s increasingly online world, government agencies are harnessing the power of digitization and cyber capabilities to push modernization. Now, more and more critical government systems, infrastructure and operations are online — but are these components protected?

Chuck Brooks, president of Brooks Consulting International and a member of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Expert program, thinks that overall, the federal government is off to a good start in the area of cybersecurity — especially considering what has not been done in the last decade. However, cyber threats are increasing, and we’re not moving fast enough.

“This group, particularly at DHS and CISA, has brought in a lot of private sector talent, they’ve initiated the zero trust strategies, there’s a lot of proclamations coming out from DOD, from OMB, from all over. So they’ve been very aggressive, particularly against the backdrop of the threat from Russia,” Brooks said in a video interview with Executive Mosaic.

But unfortunately, Brooks said, “it’s just too little.”

“The attack surface is so huge, there are so many vulnerabilities we have with legacy systems in government — patching, correcting and redesigning them is going to take a long time,” he warned.

In the meantime, he said agencies should focus on basic cyber hygiene, implementing zero trust and moving to the cloud, among other cyber best practices.

Brooks also said the government tech market is “wildly hot” right now, especially surrounding things like AI/ML, quantum and 5G.