The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to migrate its entire application portfolio to the cloud by Jan. 20, 2028, a move that would make the agency one of the largest in the federal government to complete a full cloud transition, according to a senior official.
“We’re going to be one of the first agencies at this scale to move all 276 apps in the cloud,” said Sanjeev “Sonny” Bhagowalia, CBP chief information officer and assistant commissioner, on June 9 at IBM Think Gov 2026 in Washington, D.C.
The migration effort is already well underway. The agency has already migrated about 80% of its application tier and roughly 50% of its database tier, Bhagowalia said.
CBP launched its agencywide cloud migration effort in 2017 as part of a broader modernization strategy that moved the agency away from costly legacy mainframes and aligned with federal data center consolidation requirements. It will retire a Tier 4 data center. The effort received a significant boost in 2020 through funding from the federal Technology Modernization Fund.
Other top tech priorities
Beyond cloud modernization, Bhagowalia outlined several technology priorities shaping CBP’s digital transformation strategy, including quantum readiness, artificial intelligence (AI), and cybersecurity.
CBP is preparing for the emergence of quantum computing by testing post-quantum cryptography technologies with industry partners and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
“We think quantum is moving to the left,” Bhagowalia said, referring to the accelerating pace of development. “However, we want to watch out for post-quantum cryptography with the harvesting now and decrypting later.”
He said the agency is among the first federal organizations testing post-quantum cryptography algorithms and is working closely with NIST and industry partners to prepare for future security requirements.
In AI, Bhagowalia said the agency’s strategy has evolved from traditional predictive analytics toward generative AI, agentic AI, and edge AI applications. CBP is also deploying AI-powered coding assistants to improve software development productivity.
“We look at how AI, first of all, is reasonable, and it has to meet law enforcement standards,” Bhagowalia said.
A comprehensive agencywide data catalog and clear data ownership framework have been critical to enabling AI adoption, Bhagowalia noted.
Cybersecurity remains a growing challenge as threat activity increases. Bhagowalia said CBP now faces approximately 150 million cyberattack attempts each day and is shifting its cybersecurity strategy in response.
“First thing is to modernize our cybersecurity approach from compliance to more proactive,” he said, adding that the agency is strengthening visibility across its networks, applying AI to improve cyber resilience, and advancing a zero trust security architecture.