How States Secure the Cloud Era with Identity-First Strategies
StateTech, Sunday, September 27th, 2026
Virginia's centralized identity foundation shows how states use identity, not the network perimeter, to secure hybrid cloud workloads.
Virginia's IT agency consolidated dozens of Active Directory instances into one, synchronized it with Microsoft Entra ID, and added Okta single sign-on, a foundation that now authenticates staff to more than 1,000 enterprise applications so agencies migrating to the cloud do not need to rebuild IAM each time.
CIO Michael Watson says single sign-on improved the user experience and reduced phishing incidents.
Forrester's Geoff Cairns explains why zero trust and hybrid cloud are pushing states to build security around identity rather than the network perimeter.