Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy

The Department of Education and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) need to do better in coordinating efforts to aid K-12 schools in cybersecurity, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]

Federal money spending government

It’s no secret the Federal government can’t compete with the private sector when it comes to pay for many job classifications. But Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Kiran Ahuja said this week that Federal agencies often compete with themselves when it comes to attracting talent, and OPM is looking into a Special Salary Rate to even the playing field between agencies. […]

Department of Commerce

The Commerce Department has appointed 16 experts from both the public and private sector to its newly created Internet of Things Advisory Board (IoTAB), the agency said in an Oct. 24  press release. […]

CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a new Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) on Oct. 21 warning about ransomware attacks by the Daixin Team hacking group. The advisory says the Daixin Team has been targeting U.S. healthcare organizations […]

Arati Prabhaker, who took over as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) earlier this month, late last week outlined several mindset and policy shifts that she said are necessary to meet technology challenges facing the United States. […]

Ten months after President Biden released his executive order for government to improve customer experience, a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) argues that Federal agencies are “still doing a poor job of measuring satisfaction, and they are conspicuously lagging in offering digital services.” […]

Robin Carnahan

As telework and hybrid work have become part of the new normal for the Federal government, General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Robin Carnahan said her agency is rethinking the use of physical building space and will be rolling out coworking spaces for agencies to test in November. […]

Federal money spending government

The Department of Education’s one-time student debt relief application appears to be holding up nicely against website traffic during its first week after completing beta testing – with 22 million people using the site since then. That figure represents more than half of the universe of borrowers eligible to get student debt relief. […]

CISA

Concerns over Russian-sponsored attacks on the United States midterm elections have grown in the months leading up to next month’s contests, but the prospect of actual attack are less concerning than the perception that possible attacks create, according to Brian Liston, senior threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future. […]

VA

Keith De Silva has been promoted to chief of staff within the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Information Security (OIS), according to his LinkedIn page. […]

cybersecurity

Today, everyone is talking about resilience, but achieving it can seem easier said than done. Security is an essential component of this mission-critical capability. In a recent interview with MeriTalk, Andy Stewart, senior national security and government strategist at Cisco, broke down security resilience into five dimensions. Stewart, who previously served as the assistant chief of staff for operations and maritime operations center director at fleet cyber command, U.S. Navy 10th Fleet, also discussed the role of zero trust in achieving resilience. […]

Electronic Records
GSA

The Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) has made some progress in its Next Gen program since it first launched in 2017, but ongoing scheduling delays pose significant challenges to those modernization efforts, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report. […]

Happy Employee

Federal cloud experts from the Department of Justice (DoJ) said this week that while government policy mandates for zero trust migration and cloud adoption are key to advancing IT modernization and security, they should also be paired with funding in order to help agencies get the job done. […]

Will Hurd, the Texas Republican who served in the House from 2015 to 2021 and became a leading voice in Congress on IT and security issues, said this week that he sees ongoing foreign-influence operations as a lasting concern for next month’s midterm elections in the United States. […]

Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-NV, U.S. Senate

Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., requested information on Oct. 17 from the Department of Transportation (DoT) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) about cyberattacks that targeted the U.S. aviation sector last week. […]

website

With the U.S. midterm elections just around the corner and security concerns running high, a new survey finds that three-quarters of local election websites are not using the .gov domain to help boost site security and engender a higher degree of user trust.   […]

CISA

Improving the cybersecurity of the water critical infrastructure sector, K-12 schools, and healthcare sector are among the top priorities for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), agency Director Jen Easterly said today during Mandiant’s mWISE conference in Washington. […]

Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, and Frank Lucas, R-Okla., have sent a letter to White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director, Arati Prabhakar, requesting details on how OSTP plans to implement new guidance that directs Federal agencies to make Federally-funded research publicly accessible. […]

General Services Administration GSA

A group of senators sent a letter to Robin Carnahan, administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), earlier this month requesting a progress update on the accessibility of Federal technology and public-facing websites for people with disabilities, and senior citizens. […]

After more than eight years of trying, Russia has yet to realize its strategic cyber war-fighting goals in Ukraine, a top Ukrainian government technology official said on Oct. 19 at Mandiant’s Worldwide Information Security Exchange event in Washington. […]

Chris Inglis

National Cyber Director (NCD) Chris Inglis today previewed some themes from the national cybersecurity strategy that he’s working on – and said the long-awaited strategy should be publishing within the next couple of months. […]

Cloud Computing Brainstorm 2019 - Sean Connelly

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program is helping Federal agencies to make progress on mandates in President Biden’s cybersecurity executive order to install endpoint detection and response (EDR) on their networks, a senior CISA official said. […]

General Services Administration GSA

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