STRIDES Initiative: enabling collaboration through cloud IN ASSOCIATION WITH
NIH STRIDES INITIATIVE
DIGITAL REPORT 2020
02 WRITTEN BY
WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY
ARRON RAMPLING
03
w w w.da t a sc i e nc e . n ih . g ov
N I H S T R I D E S I N I T I AT I V E
Thomas Shaw, Senior Project Manager, NIH STRIDES Initiative, discusses the transformative ability of cloud and how the project fosters collaboration
I
t was in July 2018 that the first National Institutes of Health (NIH) Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for
Discovery, Experimentation and Sustainability (STRIDES) Initiative was established. Partnering 04
with Google Cloud and then, two months later, with Amazon Web Services (AWS), STRIDES was conceived as a method for the NIH to fully engage with cloud computing and explore its potential for collaborative data sharing. Part of the NIH’s wider strategy for digital transformation (the Strategic Plan for Data Science), STRIDES has and will continue to play an integral role in making the organisation’s biomedical data easier to access, use and integrate, as well as deliver a more costeffective form of data management. Joining as a Senior Project Manager in October 2018, only one month after the AWS partnership, Thomas Shaw came from a highly experienced technical background: graduating in 1986 with a BSc in Computer Science from the University of North Dakota, Shaw gained experience with the
05
w w w.da t a sc i e nc e . n ih . g ov
Nereus Systems is an integral partner to the success of the National Institute of Health’s cloud migration, inclusive of our award-winning engineering team and program managers. The National Institute of Health engaged with Nereus Systems to provide logistical support as a partner for their migration of cloud data into the Google cloud (GCP) as well as providing project plans, timelines, and timeline projections on training through both in-person and remote learning for their scientist and researcher communities.
LEVERAGE YOUR GOALS
INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS FOR A NEW WORLD Cloud ATO Nereus Systems is a next-generation partner and integrator that works with the nation’s most important government customers to help them realize their goals while mitigating their risks. We do this by providing insight into the threat landscape while also working to provide XAAS or anything as a service. Our customers include the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, Department of Energy, the Civilian government, and many of their Subcontractors. As additional support to our customers, we offer Agencies the ability to fully automate their Authority to Operate within multiple cloud environments. We are able to meet and fully automate all 6 Steps of the National Institute of Standards and Technologies Risk Management Framework (NIST RMF) while maintaining the continuous monitoring of step 6. AI/ML As we continue to innovate with our customers and partners, Nereus Systems is investing heavily in AI/ML in real-world applications to be able to utilize the benefits of these developing technologies while being realistic around their limitations. There will never be a Silver Bullet to any problem set, but there are ways in which a holistic approach to IT and Cyber will utilize the best out of leading-edge systems. Deception, lateral spread, and time to remediation through log correlation are areas that we continue to focus on, and provide real value to our customers while being conscious of their IT budgets. Our eyes are on the horizon, and we continually look for innovative partners and solutions so that we can advise and consult as opposed to being “a partner” that bothers their clients. Cyber Security and NIST We understand that any customer moving into a cloud environment is looking to be able to leverage a multicloud environment for both cost savings as well as the ability to utilize the technical advantages of their prospective cloud providers. But to be truly efficient in the use of cloud and next-generation tools a customer must have confidence in their security and their own compliance posture. At Nereus, we take both of these as the backbone of our mission with our customers. We continually innovate with our vendor partner community to bring leading-edge security technology to meet the ever-changing landscape. We also overlay this with our NIST 800-171 compliance services that bring our subcontractor community up to the necessary DoD standards required to be able to continue to support their customers. We do this by
Nereus Innovative Cloud Navigation
utilizing the best and most efficient tool sets available to assist in remediation as well as supporting you with your compliance needs. Our goal here is to bring you up to speed as quickly and as painlessly as possible so that you are able to focus on your mission objective and not your compliance posture. I own a small aerospace engineering services business, and Nereus has been invaluable for helping us get our arms around how to secure and maintain our IT environment. Before engaging with them, I really didn’t have a clear path for how to successfully verify and maintain compliance to the NIST SP 800-171 requirements. The deep bench of experience that Nereus was able to assemble for me, between their in-house employees and the personnel at their partner network of companies, was impressive and ensured that my system was in good hands. The team members were able to provide us a solid System Security Plan (SSP) update, Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) manual, and a vulnerability assessment that identified a number of areas for improvement followed by an easy-tofollow guide for shoring up these vulnerabilities. Nereus was able to provide this much-needed service for us at a price point that was far better than anything else I could find - anywhere (and I’d been very thorough in my searches in the year leading up to our engagement with Nereus). They have taken a huge weight and worry off of my shoulders, and I’m very happy that I’ve found the to work within securing my company’s systems. Tim Read, CEO T4 Engineering We take great pride in the clients that we service and adopt their missions as our own. Our collective backgrounds, histories, and work ethic speak for themselves and we hope we can leverage that for your goals.
N I H S T R I D E S I N I T I AT I V E
“ When it comes to healthcare in the US, I’m always curious about how we can advance” — Thomas Shaw, Senior Project Manager, STRIDES Initiative
American Red Cross, the National Center for Biotechnology Information and even NASA. His career has been an intermingling of technology and healthcare, but this is no coincidence: Shaw claims that the challenges of the former and the inherent significance of the latter made it an ideal combination. “What’s most important to me is ‘what am I doing? What’s the project in mind?’” he explains. “When it comes to healthcare in the US, I’m always curious about how we can advance.”
08
Recognising the NIH as an organisation devoted to positive change and making a difference in people’s lives, Shaw became the first project manager brought onboard for the STRIDES Initiative and appreciated the team’s open workplace culture: “You can go to anybody and ask for help and people will, regardless of what the issue is,” he says. “At the same time, all of the cloud service providers we are working with display an identical attitude and commitment: It’s not ‘we can’t do this’, rather ‘how can we do this?’ and that’s a wonderful environment to be in.” This aspect has proven particularly crucial because of STRIDES’ sheer scope:
Next Generation Biomedical Research using AWS CLICK TO WATCH
|
53:13
09 integrating data from across 2,700
and a variety of reports. Regarding
NIH-funded Institutes and organisa-
the latter, these can take the form of
tions comprising research on topics
monthly spend reports, supplementary
ranging from tooth decay to vaccines),
information and account monitoring
the amount of information necessary to
which will send timely alerts to possible
carry out the project is truly immense.
over-spending.
Offering support services to assist
The fundamentals of the Initiative
in the utilisation of cloud resources, the
rest on three pillars: access, collabora-
STRIDES Initiative covers consulta-
tion and innovation. However, large
tion, structured coordination between
volumes of data require a simplified,
the STRIDES team and the recipient’s
integrated, easy-to-access platform
project or programme, a flexible pro-
in order to be readily accessible and
ject billing setup regardless of how the
cloud computing was the vital ingredi-
research is NIH-funded, cloud training
ent which pulled STRIDES together.
(both in-person and online resources)
According to Shaw, the move to cloud w w w.da t a sc i e nc e . n ih . g ov
Simplifying Data Migration and Data Protection for Google Cloud Platform. Biomedical Research starts with secure, quality data that is protected, easy to manage in the cloud and cost-effective. Simplify, eliminate risk and ease your migration and data management to the cloud with HYCU.
For more information contact: Elizabeth Losi, Civilian Sales Manager, US Federal/Public Sector HYCU, Inc. liz.losi@hycu.com
Click here to learn how you can accelerate your NIH STRIDES journey, safely and securely to the Cloud.
publicsector@hycu.com
was “a big step forward” in the sense
without cloud, such a monumental
that it liberated the sharing of informa-
task might have been too expensive
tion whilst simultaneously maintaining
to execute. “There have been prior
granular control over it. Making the
attempts to do what we’re achieving
information accessible to research
with STRIDES, but, at that time, some
staff without the need to download
of the technology just wasn’t there for
it mitigated the need for substantial
it.” Now that communicating between
investment in servers to house the
teams is easier than ever before, a
NIH’s collective data, thus saving costs
digital, cloud-powered NIH community
significantly. Indeed, Shaw states that,
can explore each others’ work in new
E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E :
11
Thomas Shaw Title: Senior Project Manager
Location: Burke, Virginia
Thomas Shaw is a Senior Project Manager on the NIH STRIDES Initiative. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of North Dakota and a minor in Mathematics. Along with the over 20 years at NIH, he has been the Director of Test Engineering and Configuration Management at the American Red Cross and worked in many different industry sectors including Secure Communications, Industrial Automation and Medical Devices. He brings his wealth of knowledge from these different arenas to the forefront to foster highly functioning teams and is valued for his ability to think outside the box to apply concepts and ideas to solve complex problems in unconventional ways. By seeing the big picture while being able to focus on the details helps mitigate many risks by addressing them ahead of time. w w w.da t a sc i e nc e . n ih . g ov
N I H S T R I D E S I N I T I AT I V E
and interesting ways. “We have an ecosystem where people with access are collaborating which will lead to innovation. I think it’s really going to excite people,” adds Shaw. STRIDES’ ability to remove or lower barriers to seamless collaboration and data sharing is what Shaw calls “the golden ticket” for working in cloud space. “At this time, incurring egress is the only way to move data from one CSP (cloud service provider) to another. Resolving the barriers of 12
CSP data-sharing will take research to the next level,” he says. Shaw even postulates that a future pandemic on the scale of COVID-19 could be dealt with more effectively within a mature STRIDES ecosystem. The ability to get quick access to cloud resources, NIH-funded datasets and the ability to work closely with fellow researchers would be highly advantageous in the fight against a new virus. “No longer will that vital research remain only in the domain of major universities or organisations,” he continues. “Instead the playing field will shift to a more level place for research: large funded institutes, researchers at
underserved organisations, post-docs, doctoral candidates and even retired researchers with inspired insights could contribute towards a solution.” Although there is no way to predict when a similar pandemic might occur again, one thing appears certain: the power of cloud as a binding agent for coordinating a response will form the basis of any effective plan. The liberating potential of digital transformation is exemplified by NIH’s decision to pursue the STRIDES Initiative, something Shaw claims was the result of upper management’s realisation that its legacy systems would no longer be functional in the modern digital era. Whilst 10 years ago the Initiative’s aims would have been difficult to execute, modern technology has accelerated capacity beyond imagining. “You would not have been able to move 20 petabytes of data up into the cloud in less than a year previously; it would have probably taken a couple of years at best,” he explains. Such dynamic leaps make the team’s open style of workplace culture even more valuable, as their expertise and receptiveness make them ideal for w w w.da t a sc i e nc e . n ih . g ov
13
guiding others through the change.
focus include data protection and
Taking the time and effort to organise
monitoring software for multi-cloud
training for NIH staff is something
data centres and providing STRIDES
Shaw takes pride in, particularly for
with an effective and simplified method
those who do not properly understand
for eliminating IT issues before they
the cloud. As such, he considers
become problematic. From infrastruc-
STRIDES to be merely the latest itera-
ture assessments, security reviews,
tion of a project which will continue to
access management, training and
improve over the years: “The goal is to
many other services, STRIDES needs
maintain STRIDES and allow it to con-
collaborators who are as intrepid and
tinue in one form or another.�
inspired to expand the frontiers of bio-
Navigating the future successfully
medical research as it is. Successful
will depend on partners as forward-
partners will be those companies that
thinking as NIH itself. Key areas of
are agile, free flowing and committed to
NIH STRIDES Cloud overview: Key Concepts CLICK TO WATCH
|
11:10
w w w.da t a sc i e nc e . n ih . g ov
15
N I H S T R I D E S I N I T I AT I V E
PA RT N ERSHI PS
16
The STRIDES Initiative’s first partnership was with Google Cloud in July 2018. Joe Corkery, MD, Director of Product, Healthcare and Life Sciences at Google Cloud, said, “We’re committed to working with the NIH to create the best environment possible for biomedical research to f lourish across the country and across the globe. Together, we’re eliminating barriers to accessing and making meaning from the most important datasets: the ones that have the potential to advance science and human health.” Andrea T. Norris, CIO at NIH, added: “By launching STRIDES, we clearly show our strong commitment to putting the most advanced cloud computing tools in the hands of scientists. Beyond our partnership with
Google Cloud, we will seek to add more industry partners to assure that NIH continues to be well poised to support the future of biomedical research.” Furthermore, “teaming with AWS will give NIH researchers powerful cloud-based resources to more efficiently collaborate and analyze data,” added Norris. “AWS’s long standing leadership in the cloud space will help bolster the innovative research being conducted through NIH support.” “We’re committed to providing those researchers participating in the STRIDES Initiative with access to high-value NIH datasets, enabling them to further their research to study, treat, and prevent the most devastating diseases,” said Teresa Carlson, VP at AWS.
“ The goal is to maintain STRIDES and allow it to continue in one form or another” — Thomas Shaw, Senior Project Manager, STRIDES Initiative
as interest has increased. I don’t see much changing as far as our cloud is concerned, apart from an increase in usage as more and more people use it.” Shaw intimates that the ‘new normal’, or the revised attitudes to work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, could mean that STRIDES has come along at the perfect time. With remote working and a focus on the practical convenience of digital, organisations have awoken to the benefits of operating in a cloud-based system. Now that the collaborative ecosystem, of
the STRIDES Initiative’s mission, whilst
which STRIDES anticipated, is starting
also bringing cutting edge biomedi-
to become essential to the future of
cal information solutions to the cloud
research, Shaw adds that his team’s
space for NIH-funded research.
mission will be to optimise and make it
Looking ahead to the end of 2020
as affordable as possible. “I think, if we
and the short-term future of STRIDES,
develop a superior model, other univer-
Shaw is optimistic that over 100 NIH-
sities will pick up on the idea and buy
funded institutions will have signed
into the STRIDES programme. Then,
up and enrolled in the Initiative, citing
down the road at some point, maybe
a substantial uptick in the usage of
even corporations will do the same.”
cloud resources since the beginning of spring. The reason, he presumes, is the exponential growth of data being generated by facilities within the NIH ecosystem: “The amount of data has quadrupled in the past year w w w.da t a sc i e nc e . n ih . g ov
17
P0WERED BY
W W W.DATASCIENCE.NIH.GOV