HSDF THE PODCAST

Industry Real Time Response to CBP Mission Needs

• Homeland Security & Defense Forum

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Industry leaders provided real-time responses to address CBP mission needs by leveraging cutting-edge technology and agile solutions to address emerging challenges in border security, trade facilitation, and public safety. By fostering collaboration and rapid innovation, industry partners can help CBP enhance operational efficiency and adapt to evolving threats and mission-critical requirements. 

  • Garth White, Director, Intelligence and Homeland Security, Oracle
  • Paul Wilkinson, Senior Vice President, Digital Modernization Practice Area Leader, Leidos
  • Tom Ragland, Business Development & Integration, Dell Technologies
  • Bogdan Frusina, Founder, Dejero 
  • Dan Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Homeland Security, GDIT
  • Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator)

 This discussion took place at the HSDF’s Border Security Symposium on December 11th, 2024 

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• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

Hey, good afternoon everyone. Thanks, gentlemen, for coming in. I do want to say I think the size of the panel is directly related to the quality of the moderator. Quality of the moderator, not necessarily better. I normally had Sunil and Ed as sitting on my panel. They usually fill all the time. I didn't need more people, so we got a great panel set up for this one. So I'll get right into it, because I expected to fill the entire time quickly.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

One of the first things we kind of spoke about was CBP has the need for the industry collaboration and support to facilitate its mission. It's the industry's obligation to be aware of its own supply chain activities. Cbp encourages industry stakeholders to start due diligence efforts now by tracing supply chains, evaluating risk, communicating with suppliers and keeping thorough documentation. What I want to ask from each of you if you have anything to add there thorough documentation. What I want to ask from each of you, if you have anything to add there is what actions have you taken to ensure that your firm is collaborating with other industry firms to avoid disruption and bring innovation? In any order you want to do it, and feel free to answer each other.

• Bogdan Frusina, Founder, Dejero :

Sure, I guess Fair enough. No, I mean so. At DeJure, for example, we take things very seriously. So we definitely look for child labor. We take all our suppliers and we force them into those type of processes as well. As much as we can do flow downs. But we also try to validate. We have a rule where we try to visit our suppliers at least once every two years, if near minimum, just to make sure that it's proper brick and mortar.

• Bogdan Frusina, Founder, Dejero :

Just having that visualization of and mortar, it's probably just having that visualization of stuff. It's very, very important and working with trusted partners like dell to ensure that the supply chain is very valid of all their parts and the components that are being used and they're all following the proper fcc rules that are currently being put in place on supply chain security and everything else and ensuring that happens. So for us that's an extremely important thing and we want to make sure that the entire, all the way from production of the chip to the output of the product, is properly managed and then the day-to support. It's also important to ensure it's done with the proper security infrastructure in place, because this equipment that gets deployed at the edge, especially with our stuff, as the previous panel said is about saving lives and ensuring constant connectivity, so that stuff cannot be taken lightly. Security breaches cannot happen, so it's very, very important.

• Tom Ragland, Business Development & Integration, Dell Technologies:

So that's kind of some of the stuff that we do okay and bogging echoing.

• Tom Ragland, Business Development & Integration, Dell Technologies:

Dell lives globally. We rely on a supply chain. Globally. We're in the zero trust mode of revalidate trust. No one continue to go down to that second, third and fourth level of your supply chain, looking for the knockoffs, looking for the substitute items or non-compliant items. If DHS or any of our partners turns to us, we're open. Here's where we have risk. Here's where we're mitigating risks, such as separating as much of our supply chain out of the PRC as rapidly as possible. Multiple sources with validated compliant items throughout the supply chain. Otherwise, our partners are let down and ultimately, dhs is one of those where there's. We want it up here all the time and always getting better.

• Dan Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Homeland Security, GDIT:

Yeah, so I think you know, gdit being part of General Dynamics from a supply chain perspective, we received some benefits from that relationship. I mean, general Dynamics buys billions of dollars a year in equipment, software, very specialized hardware and other things like that that we use across different national security and defense mission spaces. So you know, deep inspection of that supply chain, not only in terms of just hardware origination and where things are coming from, but really digging into vulnerabilities and risks in hardware, is pretty critical and very key to really having an overall secure supply chain. I think part of the challenge there too is continual revalidation of that supply chain as well. I mean, just because you've got a product in a supply chain link that looks clean now doesn't mean that it's not going to be compromised at some point in the future.

• Dan Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Homeland Security, GDIT:

So, having alternatives, being able to switch suppliers no offense, tom, but you know being able to find opportunities to see where you can build diversity and build flexibility into the supply chain, so that when you run into risks or run into problems you have an alternative and you have a way to be able to make a change there, which is really critical. The other piece and Tom talked about not trusting anyone. I think there does actually need to be a lot of trust built into the supply chain between vendors and suppliers and integrators. We need to know when there are challenges, when there are vulnerabilities or risks. I mean we're seeing a lot of that right now with campaigns like Salt Typhoon, where you've got substantial vulnerability in different pieces of network hardware and network infrastructure that industry really needs to be able to work together and collaborate on to be able to resolve.

• Paul Wilkinson, Senior Vice President, Digital Modernization Practice Area Leader, Leidos:

Yeah, so from a Leidos perspective, it's interesting because we both create, product and sell, so we have supply chain that fuels the things that we build for our government customers.

• Paul Wilkinson, Senior Vice President, Digital Modernization Practice Area Leader, Leidos:

But we also run some of the largest supply chains in the world for the government. So, interesting fact, we run the largest and longest supply chain for Antarctica, so we're both moving things into Antarctica as part of our supply chain mission. In addition to the things that were stated, cmmc is 2.0's first phase is coming January 2025. So all the controls put in place, all the system checks, making sure that our ecosystem and our partners are adhering to CMMC is a big part of ensuring that we don't have counterfeit materials or gray market items in there. And we're also looking at, with emerging tech, the ownership and investment of emerging technology that's being brought to bear, just making sure that we understand where investments are being made and where that technology originates. Also important is just the monitoring. We do our best to secure supply chains, but security operations to make sure that we can identify, detect and respond to threats in the supply chain.

• Garth White, Director, Intelligence and Homeland Security, Oracle:

Yeah, so from an Oracle perspective, we are a hardware provider as well as a CSP. A number of our systems and a number of our supply chain managements are part of what we do for industry as well as the government. So it's about managing risk and traceability of all of where we get our hardware from, where it's deployed into to alleviate, you know, forced labor or gray market items within the space.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

Yeah, I think all those are super important for the national security, knowing where this thing comes. Also, cbp is also charged with forced labor law, enforcing forced labor laws where those things were created. You saw that with the solar panels and those being imported. But all the technology coming in, where did it come from? Who's building it? Cbp is charged for that.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

So transition just a little bit, I mean. So HSDF, the forum, was established to talk about the collaboration of government and industry together. So kind of you know we go, so we go forward Any administration change. We've got a lot of new priorities, some renewed priorities. We're going to see a lot of those that CBP must also then prioritize. We have a lot of priorities but then those things come in quick. Those priorities most often have a very short implementation timeline. I think we've heard some of those efforts like one month, two months, six months a year. It's not unusual, but it's really quick timelines and it can be a little bit controversial, especially in the CBP world. So what have you done, preparing your capabilities, the approaches, the outlook and even the workforce for what CBP is going to be prioritized to task to do with?

• Garth White, Director, Intelligence and Homeland Security, Oracle:

So I'll jump in. We have a great partnership with CBP and we offer a number of training, and it helps us twofold. One, it helps understand the full breadth and scope of our capabilities and to fill in those gaps, to say, hey, I really would like it if we were able to do this, and that really helps keep us innovating, keep us directly attached to the people that are actually doing the work. So, from an Oracle perspective, that's how we're preparing.

• Paul Wilkinson, Senior Vice President, Digital Modernization Practice Area Leader, Leidos:

Yeah, One of the things that we did last year is I lead the digital modernization practice area for Leidos last year is I lead the digital modernization practice area for Leidos and we identified last year that and we face the government in vertical alignment homeland security, defense, national security so we have vertical alignment and we saw that we were doing digital modernization work in each of these areas or sectors.

• Paul Wilkinson, Senior Vice President, Digital Modernization Practice Area Leader, Leidos:

So one of the things we did and even before the administration and Doge is that we started to consolidate and create a capability that's horizontally across Leidos around digital modernization, and so we formulated that go-to-market sector and really focused on repeatability and preparing our solutions, so really driving in through areas of cloud and AI and defensive cyber and focusing on creating repeatable offerings for our customers Things that commonly impact our customers like zero trust.

• Paul Wilkinson, Senior Vice President, Digital Modernization Practice Area Leader, Leidos:

How can we create a repeatable solution or offering that we can use for one customer and it applies to many? So that way, we're accelerating time to value, we're creating resiliency in the solutions that we offer and we can do things smarter and more efficient. An example of that is a partnership we have with the company MoveWorks, where it's a digital experience, so agencies can come in or customers can come in and they can look at through a single chat bot across all of their data inside of their enterprise. So we're really trying to create that repeatability and how we deliver solutions as a new administration comes in and making sure that we can provide fast solutions. From a people's perspective, we're really focused on communities of practice. So, as around these digital modernization practice areas, we're really focused on creating accelerated learning for our people, providing mobility, knowledge sharing that allows us to really invest and train and that helps our customers with their mission and it provides a way for us to just again accelerate time to value for our customers.

• Dan Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Homeland Security, GDIT:

Yeah, you know, at GDAT we really view ourselves as being and our goal is to be the most trusted mission partner to DHS, and when I think about what that means to me and to our team, it really is partnering with our customers, partnering with the mission to deliver what the mission needs today and tomorrow, which is not necessarily the same thing that it needed yesterday, and that means integrating flexibility, collaboration, high levels of communication into our contracts, into the way that we work with our clients, the way that we work with our partners.

• Dan Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Homeland Security, GDIT:

I look across the room here and I see so many partners that we routinely work with to deliver on the DHS mission, and I think that spirit of collaboration and that spirit of partnership is really something that we need to double down on as a community over the next couple of years here, as we're moving into a new administration, so that we can understand and adapt to new priorities and use the contracts that we do have to be flexible and to adjust fast.

• Dan Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Homeland Security, GDIT:

At the same time, I also think that the community needs to be more aggressive in terms of using OTAs, using other forms of contracting that are newer, more innovative and that give us the opportunity to solve new problems fast rather than going through the normal procurement cycle and large-scale capital planning cycle that a lot of things need to move through now and I think that there's great technology that's coming to bear. We've heard a lot about new technology today. Getting that technology integrated on long-term contracts a lot of times can be challenging, so finding ways to be able to integrate and to move the mission forward with contracting with good partners is really key for us.

• Tom Ragland, Business Development & Integration, Dell Technologies:

Looking forward. I don't think there's anyone in the audience that hasn't heard DOGE. We initiated six months ago the emphasis on efficiencies across our priority areas Edge compute, the multi-cloud, the baking in of security solutions. And then it was roll up the sleeves and cut in half the response time. With all of our customers, whether they be FSI partners or whether they're government customers, the need for constant sharing and communications has accelerated beyond any of our beliefs.

• Tom Ragland, Business Development & Integration, Dell Technologies:

So it's focus on your priorities the edge compute and giving the example of federated sharing of data. If it's captured on the edge, it doesn't automatically go to the cloud. There's an evaluation process. Is it best remaining on the edge and being shared all the way up the food chain, giving access and having the appropriate controls? Where do we cut costs? Because our government customers are telling us there is no influx of new monies, so we have to show them cost savings, areas of what were existing services in the O&M area or anything else, in order to make them more productive, more efficient. So we're putting almost everything through that DOGE filter right now.

• Paul Wilkinson, Senior Vice President, Digital Modernization Practice Area Leader, Leidos:

Go ahead. Yeah, so at LIDIS we're really focused on we've supported DHS and CBP mission at the edge for quite some time now but really focused on that trusted mission AI, turning data into information to actual intelligence. And really important to that is trust inside of that actual system. Making sure that we're adhering to regulations is trust inside of that actual system making sure that we're adhering to regulations, governance, making sure we have the guardrails and make sure that the systems inside of that chain are trusted and are known to each other. So that trusted mission AI through our FAIRS approach.

• Paul Wilkinson, Senior Vice President, Digital Modernization Practice Area Leader, Leidos:

Fairs is lightest as approach to how we deliver trusted mission AI and so that's really critically important for our mission MLOps as we deploy to the edge today. That's something we do Seen in things like ProSight. You go through the airport, you can go through the scanners. You see that those things are operating in all sorts of different environments. The architecture is built where it can collect the data modulately. It can collect it locally, it can analyze data and then it can communicate back up in a command and control. It can collect it locally, it can analyze data and then it can communicate back up in a command and control. So, yeah, that's the nature of the mission and it's really critically important that we continue to push forward and build trust inside of delivering to the edge.

• Garth White, Director, Intelligence and Homeland Security, Oracle:

One of the key themes I heard earlier was transparency. I know that Oracle is when they're developing and partnering with industry to develop large language models, the underpinnings are is a transparent, because we understand that the government wants to see how are these models made and how are they implemented. And one of the other things, too, is how are they updated? You know, let's automate these large language models to adjust themselves in real time so they can learn as well.

• Garth White, Director, Intelligence and Homeland Security, Oracle:

One of the things also that I wanted to talk about was within Oracle is the way we categorize and label data, and one of the things I heard earlier was the issue is let's make the data, we'll use it. Let's categorize it. Let's use AI to make our data full and wholesome so we can actually use it, because AI is only as good as the data that is being fed, and one of my good buddies, ryan Ritucci, was always preaching to me was you got to make sure that you know where your data is at, what is it? What data fields do you need to capture and use? And that's one of our big pushes here is to understand where data exists, how, how can we leverage it, making our products and services that much more usable for the end user.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

Thanks. You heard Sunil talk about data labeling being the biggest surprise, realizing what a hurdle that was, and it's a hurdle, tremendous, tremendous.

• Garth White, Director, Intelligence and Homeland Security, Oracle:

There's such a thing as data pollution. It is a real thing.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

It's huge. A lot of good points brought up on that. So I did like the pay for what you use, because that's important, because you heard Ed Mays say that earlier. It's definitely an austere budget, right, no matter how big it seems or where it's austere, because there's always a lot more requirements than there is money to get those things done. Then there is money to get those things done and as we get into more of that efficiency being driven we're always driven for efficiency, but there's going to be even more drive for that.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

Really, that you're probably paying for what you use, whether it be the contract service or the contractors or whatever. That's going to be a big focus. It's been a big focus in CBP for as I left and I can only imagine even more so that kind of mentality going in there You're getting your money's worth or you're paying for what you use, none of that fluff at the end. That's going to be a big point for them. I did I don't know if Sunil walked out. So before I left CBP a month and a half ago and one of our big pushes and one of the things we really focused on was the CBP Connect portal and I didn't hear them bring it up, and they were the ones that told me to always bring it up every time they did it.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

If you don't know what the CBP Connect portal is, and you heard Ed. Ed doesn't turn down a meeting, but to get to Ed it's not always easy, right? So there's different ways to do it. And then meeting with people in CBP, there's a bunch of different levels. How do you get them all in the same place at the same time, even in CBP? It's a challenge.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

The CBP Connect portal allows industry to then register your company and then be able to select who you want to be able to speak to. And we were speaking about it earlier and I wanted to get if people had used before, if anybody hasn't used it really get with them and keep driving that, because we had a lot of good success with it within CBP of being able to get more people in and the right people in the right meetings. So you weren't having three meetings and we weren't having three meetings on the same thing. So I'd like any feedback that you all had on that one only, because I promised I would keep pushing that to make sure people use it because it is efficient. I'm all about efficiency.

• Tom Ragland, Business Development & Integration, Dell Technologies:

And if you don't, Ryan Ricucci will come back at you because he wants analysis and the CBP portal and every other effort like that is a step in the right direction.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

But thank you Ryan. Yeah, he's in here somewhere. There he is. Anybody else have any use with it? But if not, I just blocked it. No, okay, so if you don't know what it is, get with them. It's quick QR code. They'll get you in there. You register your company and that will get you quicker to the right people. And if you're having trouble registering, get back with them and tell them you're having problems to work through it.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

But now CBP has pretty much gone across the board. So if you've never been able to have acquisitions in that meeting when you want to have, when we're talking about not having the right contract vehicles being set up, if you want to talk to OIT, try and get acquisitions in there up front going hey, this is not working the way we've been doing it, so let's quit doing it the wrong way. Let's try and do it the right way. Save CBP time and save you time and get to the right answer quicker, because I think we're almost out of time. I want to give any opportunities for anybody, because we have a lot of different stuff to go over and I had to limit y'all down a little bit. But any parting ideas, thoughts, because this is everybody's opportunity to hear kind of your train of thought for the day.

• Dan Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Homeland Security, GDIT:

Yeah, you know, I think one thing I'll throw out. I think we were just sitting on this a little bit. With the portal, great technologies are in use really across the space and I see a lot of the representatives from a lot of the companies that are building those capabilities in the room and I think one of the things that the community needs in general is to be able to bring those capabilities to our customers faster. So to get ideas, bring them to the table where you can say, hey, this is how CBP or this is how Border Patrol specifically, can use this technology to solve a real mission problem, I think is really key. And then you know, working with others in the community who have the technology, the services, the integration capabilities, other pieces, to be able to pull those things together and to show a real mission use case fast.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

Yeah, and definitely showing up with your collaboration. So my small month and a half on the industry side, I've seen a lot of that, where now you're more proactively bringing everything to bear up front whenever you're going to go talk about what you can provide to the government. That's the way to do it, because if you come and say I need to come back and you're 60% there, you're going to be way behind because CBP doesn't have that kind of time to wait for that and you're going to be behind somebody else for six months. So collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. Get that done up front and it's going to save you a lot of time.

• Paul Wilkinson, Senior Vice President, Digital Modernization Practice Area Leader, Leidos:

Yeah, I would echo what Dan says Really working with our strategic partners, working with commercial technology companies, opinionating those technologies, with our mission knowledge to create better, smarter, more efficient solutions. That's what's needed right now. We don't have luxury of time, we never do but smarter, more efficient, quicker, where we can partner together, is the path forward.

• Tom Ragland, Business Development & Integration, Dell Technologies:

And restating, as Dr Mays said, speed to mission. If you have a problem, something's not working for you or you think you've got a better solution to help your partners. He, Sunil, have been wonderful in terms of you call, they'll set up the meeting. So they are leaning forward. They want the feedback quickly and cleanly. The data, the data, the data.

• Ryan Scudder, Former EAC for Enterprise Services, CBP (moderator):

Okay, Everybody good. Well, I think we've run right up on the time with 30 seconds to spare. Sorry, I don't get the hook from Chief Aguilar. The first time doing moderating panel forum, I want to thank you all for taking the time and really kind of giving us your thoughts as we go forward on the collaboration and the way to do it correctly. So thank you very much, thank you all, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.