GMIS 2026: Bringing Exposure Management to Government IT

GMIS is an association of local government information technology professionals dedicated to fostering an environment of sharing as it relates to topics affecting the rapidly changing world of technology in the public sector.

The Illinois annual conference, GIANTS, took place last week in Bloomington-Normal, IL. As a new member of GMIS, this was a fantastic opportunity for UncommonX to meet with IT and security leaders from over 100 local governments.

We left the event energized and, frankly, validated. The conversations we had confirmed something we have been seeing across the market: government IT leaders are looking for a fundamentally different approach to cybersecurity.

The GMIS GIANTS Community

The GMIS GIANTS attendees are a tight-knit and engaged community with deep expertise, professionalism, and a genuine curiosity to learn and apply new technologies and practices. Discussions ranged from best practices for managing cybersecurity with a small team to applying AI to automate key operations.

The challenges were familiar. These are leaders trying to solve the same critical cybersecurity problems every organization faces, but often with fixed budgets and staff constraints compared to the private sector. Limited resources do not mean limited ambition. The people we met are actively seeking better tools and smarter strategies to protect their communities.

Government environments also carry a unique weight. A breach does not just mean lost data. It can disrupt essential public services, compromise constituent trust, and create recovery costs that strain already tight budgets. The leaders at GIANTS understand this, and they are looking for solutions that match the seriousness of what they are protecting.

Presentations and Demonstrations

UncommonX has proven experience delivering valuable solutions in the government market with many government customers already on our platform. At GIANTS, our own Nils Lindokken presented a well-attended session on Exposure Management, highlighting the need to truly see everything in your environment, accurately evaluate risk, and use AI to generate specific instruction sets to remediate issues.

The questions that followed were telling. Attendees wanted to know how quickly the platform could be deployed (minutes, not months), whether it required agents on every device (it does not), and how it worked alongside the tools they already had in place (over 300 integrations, out of the box). These are the questions of people who have been through complex, expensive implementations before and are looking for something that actually delivers on its promises.

We also had the opportunity to demonstrate our platform to a packed house and in the exhibit area. The comprehensive and transparent nature of our discovery and data access were more than intriguing for many technical attendees. Several noted that they had never seen a platform surface that level of visibility across IT, OT, and IoT in a single view without requiring agents. Our proven ROI and strong customer references caught the attention of many IT and Security directors. We are excited about the number of follow-up meetings that came out of this event.

Why It Matters

See everything. Miss nothing. That is the goal for our customers, and it especially resonates with IT and security leaders in the government market. They typically have a good selection of cybersecurity tools and trained, talented staff. What they often lack is the visibility essential to determine actual risk and an AI-powered solution that can automatically surface and help resolve the issues that matter most.

At GMIS, we met leaders who are starting to recognize that point solutions and siloed products, often retrofitted as a "platform" or marketed as "agentic AI," do not offer better protection and can significantly increase costs. These are common solutions that retrace common ground and deliver common outcomes. In cybersecurity, common means high risk.

This is where UncommonX moves past the common and offers differentiated solutions. We enjoyed sharing how our approach overcomes the common and generates uncommonly good outcomes with our unique, patented solutions:

• Fast to deploy - agentless, operational quickly
• Comprehensive in coverage - every asset type, every environment model
• Intelligent in analysis - AI-enhanced, NIST CSF-scored, context-aware
• Explicit in guidance - remediation instructions, not just alerts
• Measurable in outcomes - scores that move, reports that inform, posture that improves

UncommonX is the only exposure management platform with complete visibility. Named one of Crain's 2025 Most Innovative Companies in Chicago. 26 patents. Purpose-built for IT and security leaders who are done settling for common security.

Looking Ahead

GIANTS 2026 was our first event as a GMIS member, and it will not be our last. The government IT community is facing real challenges with real urgency, and we are committed to being part of the solution. We look forward to continuing these conversations and supporting state and local governments as they build more secure and resilient environments for the communities they serve.

→ Request a demo and see what complete visibility actually looks like in your environment.

→ Talk to our team about how we can decrease your risks and costs while improving your security and operational resilience.

→ Ask us how our AI actually works on your data, privately, and not across public clouds.