Leidos, AWS Execs on Potential Role of AI, Cloud, Analytics in Federal Cybersecurity

Keith Johnson of Leidos and Brett McMillen of Amazon Web Services discussed in an article published Tuesday on Federal News Network about cybersecurity and technology platforms that could be used by government agencies to address cyber vulnerabilities.

McMillen, director of the federal government business at AWS, said he believes that cloud could help agencies detect and respond to cyber threats and cited the potential role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in cybersecurity.

“I like to think of AI and machine learning as giving agencies the ability to solve problems that they never could solve before,” he said.

Johnson, chief technology officer of defense and intelligence business areas at Leidos, said he believes the initial step agencies should do to apply AI is to understand data through the use of analytics.

“You can’t apply AI unless you have data, and data has to be unlocked,” Johnson said.

“We need to open that up and re-architect it, expose the data, and then expose data that’s labeled because that’s when you can really apply AI.”