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Josh Dirsmith, Effectual, and Jeremy Yates, Ginnie Mae | AWS PS Partner Awards 2021 - YouTube
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
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from the cube studios in palo alto in
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boston
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connecting with thought leaders all
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around the world this is a cube
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conversation
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hello and welcome to today's session of
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the aws
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global public sector partner awards i'm
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your host natalie ehrlich
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today we're going to focus on the
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following award
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for best partner transformation i'm
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pleased to introduce
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our guests josh dorsmith vice president
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of public sector at effectual
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and jeremy yates deputy technology
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architect at ginny may
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welcome gentlemen so glad to have you on
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our show
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hi there very nice to be here thank you
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so much for having me
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terrific well josh i'd like to start
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with you how can companies leverage
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cloud native solutions to deliver
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higher quality services so natalie
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that's a great question
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and in the public sector and our our
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government customers we run to this all
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the time it's kind of our bread and
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butter
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what what they can do is the first thing
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they need to be aware of is you don't
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have to be afraid of the cloud as some
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a very obscure technology that is just
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emerging it's been out for 10 11 years
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now
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customers across government space are
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using it lock stock and barrel to do
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everything from just managing simple
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applications simple websites
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all the way through hosting their entire
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infrastructure both in production and
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for disaster recovery purposes
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as well so the first thing to to note is
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just don't be afraid
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of the cloud secondly it's it's
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imperative that they select
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the right partner who is able to kind of
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be their sherpa to go
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into uh however far they want to dip
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their toe into the
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into the proverbial cloud waters um to
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select somebody who knows
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whatever it is that they need to go do
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so if they want to go aws
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as we are talking about today pick a
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partner who has the right experience
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past performance designations and
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competencies with the cloud that they're
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interested in
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terrific well you know jeremy i'd love
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to move to you
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what does moderners modernization mean
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to jenny may
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sure thanks natalie uh great to be here
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thanks josh as well
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you know so for gma modernization is
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really uh it's not just technology it's
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holistic across the organization
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right so that includes things like the
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business not just
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you know the the i t division so we're
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looking at the various things to
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modernize like our culture and
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structural changes within the
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organization
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um moving to implement some some proven
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practices like devsecops and continuous
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integration and continuous
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delivery or deployment uh and then you
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know our overall
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overarching goal is uh to give the best
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and most secure technology
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to the business that we can to meet the
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jenny may mission
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and the needs of our customers
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terrific well josh how is effectual
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planning to support jenny may's
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modernisation plans so
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we have been supporting ginny may for
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about 14 months now
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uh and back in september of last year we
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were awarded a co-prime
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10-year contract for jennie mae to do
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exactly that it's to provide
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all things cloud to jenny may for 10
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years
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on aws and that's including reselling
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aws that's including providing
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all sorts of professional services to
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them and it's it's providing some
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third-party software applications
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to help them support their applications
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themselves
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uh so what effectual is doing is kind of
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uh
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threefold we are supporting the
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modernization of their process which
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jeremy mentioned a moment ago
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and that includes instantiating a cloud
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center of excellence
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for ginny may which now enables them to
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modernize the way they do cloud
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governance
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while they're modeling modernizing their
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technology stack we're also providing a
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very uh expert team of cloud architects
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and devsecops engineers
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to be able to to you know design the
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gini may environment collaborating with
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our co-prime
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to ensure that it meets those security
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requirements the compliance requirements
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that jerry
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mentions ginny may is a federal entity
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but it also has to adhere to all
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the finance industry uh compliance uh
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requirements as well
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so very strenuous uh from that
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perspective
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and then the third thing that we're
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doing to help them you know kind of
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along their modernization journey
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is uh instantiating infrastructure as
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code so
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in the cloud rather than building
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everything in the
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aws management console we script
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everything to build it automatically
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so it improves consistency it improves
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the customer experience regardless of
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which resource is working on it and it
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improves disaster recovery capability as
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well
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and also just quite frankly the speed by
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which they can actually deploy things
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and jeremy how is this transition
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helping your
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security really enhancing it now
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from a securities perspective uh we're
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implementing a number of various tools
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um both you know aws based as well as
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other software that josh mentioned
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so we're able to utilize those in a more
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scalable manner than we could previously
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in the traditional data center
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we've got a number of things such as
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we're looking at the
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multiple vulnerability management
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products like tennable io and qualis
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um we're we're using uh tools such as
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centrify for our pam or privileged
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access management capabilities
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um splunk a pretty industry standard um
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software for log and data correlation
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and analysis
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uh we'll also be using that for some
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system and application monitoring
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um as well as the mcafee m vision
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product for
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endpoint and other cloud service
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security so
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being able to to pull all those in in a
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more scalable
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and more cost efficient way as well from
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cloud-based services
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uh it's really helped us be able to get
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those services and integrate them
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together
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in a way that you know we may not
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previously been able to
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yeah terrific well josh let's move back
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to you and talk further about compliance
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you know any insight here how effectual
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is building a modern cloud
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infrastructure to integrate
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aws services with third-party tools to
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really achieve compliance with the
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government requirements
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just any further insight on that front
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that's a great question natalie and i'm
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going to tag team with jeremy on this
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one if you don't mind but i'll start off
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so ginny may obviously i mentioned
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earlier has federal requirements and
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financial requirements so i'll focus
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right now on
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on those federal aspects um so the tools
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that jeremy mentioned a moment ago
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we are integrating all of them with aws
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native
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meaning all of the uh way we do log
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aggregation and the various tools within
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aws
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uh cloudwatch cloudtrail all of those
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things we're implementing in aws native
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integrating them with splunk to
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aggregate all that information
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but then one of the key requirements
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that's coming up with the federal
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government in the very near future
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is tick 3.0 or trusted internet
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connection
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basically in the first iteration a
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decade or so ago the government wanted
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to limit the amount of points of
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presence that they
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have with the public-facing internet
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fast forward several versions to today
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and they're pushing that that onus back
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on the various entities
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like ginny may and like hud which jennie
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mae is a part of
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uh but they still want to have that kind
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of central log repository
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to where all of the all of the security
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logs and vulnerability logs and things
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like that
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get shipped to a central repository and
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that will be part of dhs
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so what effectual has done in
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partnership with
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ginny may is create a aws
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native solution leveraging some of those
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third-party
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tools that we mentioned earlier to get
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all of those logs
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aggregated in a central repository for
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ginny may to inspect ingest and take
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action from
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but then also provide the mechanism to
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send that to dhs
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to do that and correlate that
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information with everything coming in
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from feeds across the government now
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that's not required just yet
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but we're future proofing jenny may's
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infrastructure in order to be able to
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facilitate
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adherence to those requirements when it
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becomes uh uh
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required um and so jeremy i'll pass it
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over to you to talk a little bit further
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about that because i know that's one of
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the things that's near and dear to your
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sisto's heart as well as jenny may
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overall
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yeah absolutely thanks josh um so yeah
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we
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as you mentioned we have implemented um
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uh
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sort of a hybrid tech model right now um
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to to handle compliance on that front um
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so we're still using a you know some
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services from
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the uh the legacy or or existing uh
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2.x models that that josh was mentioning
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things such as m-tips
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the einstein sensors etc uh but we're
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also implementing that
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tick 30 architecture on our own as josh
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mentioned
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that that'll allow us to sort of future
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proof and and
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seamlessly really transition to uh once
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we make that decision
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or guidance comes out or you know
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mandates or such
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um so that effort is is good to
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future-proof
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from compliance perspective um also
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you know the tools that i mentioned uh
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then josh reiterated
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those are you know extremely important
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to our our security and compliance right
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being able to ensure you know that the
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integrity
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and the confidentiality of of our
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systems and our data
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is extremely important um not both not
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just both on the
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or not only on the government side but
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as josh mentioned the finance side as
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well
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terrific well i'd love to get your
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insight too on aws workspaces
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um if either one of you would like to
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jump in on this question
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how did they empower the ginny may team
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to work remotely through this pandemic
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that's a great question i guess i'll
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start and then we'll we'll throw it to
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jeremy
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um so obviously uh effectual started
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working with jenny may
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about three weeks after the pandemic
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formally started so
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perfect timing for any new technology uh
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uh initiative
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but anyway we we started talking with
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jeremy
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and with his leadership team about what
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is required to actually facilitate
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and enable our team as well as the
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government resources and the other
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contractors working for ginny may
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to be able to leverage the new cloud
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environment that we were building
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and the very obvious solution was to
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implement a virtual desktop
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infrastructure
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type solution and obviously jenny may
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had gone all in
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on amazon web services so it became the
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national
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natural fit to look first at aws
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workspaces
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so we have implemented that solution
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there are now hundreds of
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ginny may and jennie mae contractor
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resources that have aws workspaces
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functioning
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in the govcloud regions today and that's
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a very
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novel approach to how to facilitate and
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enable
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not only our team who is actually
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configuring the infrastructure but all
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the application developers the security
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folks
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and uh the leadership on the jd may side
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to be able to access review
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inspect check log etc
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through this remote capability uh it's
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interesting to note that jenny may has
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been
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entirely remote since the pandemic
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initiated you know jeremy's coming to us
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uh from from west virginia today i'm
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coming to us from national harbor
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maryland
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and we are operating totally remotely
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with a team of
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60 folks about supporting this specific
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initiative for the cloud
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not to mention the hundreds that are
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supporting the applications that geneva
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runs to do its day-to-day business
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so jeremy if you wouldn't mind talking
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about that day-to-day business that
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jennie mae has and kind of what the
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the mission statement of jimmy may is
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and how us enabling these workspaces
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uh you know facilitates that mission
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sure you know so the
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the part of the overall mission of
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jennie mae is to to ensure affordable
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housing is
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is made available to uh the american
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public
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um that's hud and jenny may as part of
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that and
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we provide mortgage-backed securities
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to help enable that um so we back a lot
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of
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va loans fha those sort of loans
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workspaces has been great in that manner
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from a technology perspective i think
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because
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as you mentioned josh it's really uh
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eliminated
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the need for uh on-premise
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infrastructure right it we can be
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geographically dispersed we can be
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mobile whether we're from the east coast
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or west coast
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we can access our environment securely
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and then we can you know administer and
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operate and maintain
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the technology that the business needs
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to
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to fulfill the mission um and because
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we're able to do that
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quickly and securely and effectively
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that's really helpful for the business
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terrific and um you know i'd like to
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shift gears a bit
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and uh you know discuss what you're
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looking ahead toward
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what is your vision for 2021 how do you
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see this partnership evolving
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yeah i mean you take that one first sure
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yeah
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um you know definitely some of the
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things we look forward to in 2021
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uh and as we evolve here is we're going
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to continue our cloud journey
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um you know through practices like
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devsecops
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you realize that uh that journey is
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never done it's always a continual
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improvement process
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it's a loop to uh continually work
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towards
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um a few uh specific things or at least
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one specific thing that we're looking
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forward to in the future
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as josh mentioned earlier was our our
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tick 3-0 initiative
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um so with that we think we'll be
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future-proofed
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um as there's been a lot of um
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a lot of recent cyber security activity
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and things like that that's going to
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create
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opportunities i think for the government
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and ginny may's really looking forward
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to
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to leading in that area and josh can you
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weigh in quickly on that
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absolutely uh first and foremost we're
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very much looking forward to receiving
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authority to operate
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uh with our production environment we
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have been preparing for that for this
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last year plus
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but later on this summer we will achieve
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that ato status
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and we look forward to starting to
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migrate the applications into production
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for ginny may
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and then for future proof uh it's as
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jerry
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mentioned it's a journey and we're
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looking forward to cloud optimizing
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all of their applications to ensure that
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they're spending the right money in the
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right places
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uh and and ensuring that they're not
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spending over on any of the one
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given area so we're very excited to
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optimize and then see what the
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technology that we're being able to
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provide to them
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will bring to them from an idea and a
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conceptual future for ginnie mae
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well thank you both so very much for
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your insights it's been a really
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fantastic
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interview our guests josh dursmith as
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well as
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jeremy gates really appreciate it
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thank you very much thank you so much
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terrific
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well i'm your host for the cube natalie
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ehrlich you stay tuned for more coverage
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thanks so much for watching
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