Automation is accelerating how the Defense Department’s (DOD) – rebranded as the War Department by the Trump administration – builds, secures, and operates cloud environments, senior Leidos officials said during a recent webinar, underscoring how automation is reducing approval bottlenecks, strengthening security operations, and preparing defense networks for machine-speed threats.
Brian Jolly, senior vice president for the Digital Modernization DISA IT business area at Leidos, and Blake Nelson, vice president for the Secure Cloud and Data Center Practice at Leidos, said automation is becoming foundational as defense networks grow more distributed and data-driven. They emphasized that repeatability, transparency, and real-time orchestration are now essential for mission outcomes.
Jolly pointed to the mission impact of speeding the DOD’s approval-to-connect (ATC) process. “Speed directly impacts mission outcomes,” he said, adding that automation helps teams adopt secure cloud baselines faster through inheritance and focus on results rather than manual mechanics.
Nelson said cloud landing zones and infrastructure-as-code are enabling repeatability in ATC by eliminating manual steps and shrinking security validation cycles. Automated evidence collection and configuration reporting, he added, shifts ATC from “a paperwork exercise into a real-time control plane,” allowing authorizing officials to respond faster and with greater confidence.
Both leaders said security operations are among the biggest beneficiaries of automation as defense organizations ingest growing volumes of telemetry. Nelson said automated prioritization and AI-enabled triage allow analysts to “focus on meaningful decisions” and reduce friction across teams. Jolly added that the department “simply cannot scale cybersecurity without automation,” noting that continuous configuration checks and machine-speed monitoring are essential for maintaining zero-trust postures.
Incident response is also moving toward autonomous capabilities. Jolly said automated systems now capture forensic data while enabling rapid restoration – a shift from previous tradeoffs between remediation and investigation. Nelson said log retrieval that once took hours now takes seconds, and automated correlation occurs in minutes, improving containment and reducing burnout.
Looking ahead, both leaders said the next evolution will integrate AI, cloud, and automation into an outcome-driven ecosystem. “Repeatability, automation, and secure cloud capabilities are critical to mission success,” Nelson said. “Working with partners across government and industry allows us to drive those outcomes and help defense teams move faster, stay secure, and scale confidently.”
Jolly described the future as one defined by self-healing networks and “continuous defense,” powered by real-time testing, automated baselines, and mission-aware cloud control planes.
As the DOD advances zero trust, accelerates modernization, and prepares for AI-enabled operations, the officials agreed that automation is emerging as the backbone of future defense cloud readiness.