As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in government operations, securing those systems is no longer a technical consideration. It is a national security imperative, and the path forward demands both urgency and precision.
Moderated by Troy Schneider, President of Billington CyberSecurity, the panel united J. Kemp Jennings-Roche, Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of War Cyber Crime Center; Apostol Vassilev, Research Supervisor at the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and John Sahlin, GDIT's Vice President of Cyber Solutions, to chart a clear course through one of the most complex challenges in federal technology today.
The conversation ranged from detecting vulnerabilities through AI-powered prompt engineering and defending against "living off the land" attacks to building the resilient, data-centric security architectures that modern missions demand. Ultimately, the panel addressed the question federal leaders must answer: how to move past deployment and operationalize AI in ways that deliver real mission impact, at speed and at scale, without compromising security.
