MeriTalk recently spoke with Bobby McLernon, vice president of Federal sales at Axonius, on how Federal agencies can ensure employees will transition smoothly back to in-person working environments, while maintaining proper cybersecurity practices. […]

The Department of Energy (DoE) needs to fully address potential cyber vulnerabilities to the United States electrical grid system in its national cybersecurity strategy, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report recommends. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has appointed Kevin Duvall Acting Chief Data Officer. […]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced a program aimed to expand access to domestic manufacturing capabilities for the secure development of custom computer chips for defense systems. […]

The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has issued an update to its request for information (RFI)  seeking industry input as it looks to invest in ship-mounted cloud computing infrastructure as part of the Navy’s broader future strategy for network-centric naval warfare. […]

The United States Census Bureau is turning to cloud services, in the form of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), to design and deploy surveys. […]

The United States Air Force (USAF) Cloud One program has allowed USAF to accelerate its digital modernization and find an advantage over adversaries, according to a USAF leader. […]

It’s hard enough sometimes just keeping up with the challenges of cybersecurity in the big headline-news cases – think SolarWinds in recent months or the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intrusion several years back. But the more you talk with experts in cybersecurity, the more it becomes clear that exploitable gaps in the network armor are nearly limitless, and that plugging those gaps requires innovative security in the spaces that remain off the radar for many. […]

The acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) told senators on March 18 that CISA is making efforts to complete deployment at Federal civilian agencies of the first two phases of the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program by the end of this year as part of a push to shore up Federal cybersecurity after the SolarWinds Orion hack. […]

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., chairs of the Senate and House committees on Veterans’ Affairs, respectively, both predicted this week that the COVID-19 pandemic will have a lasting effect on veterans’ access to telehealth services. […]

Federal CISO Christopher DeRusha said today that new IT modernization and security funding streams stemming from the American Rescue Plan Act represent a “down payment” on extensive work that needs to be done to improve Federal agency network security. […]

The House Homeland Security Committee approved the DHS Industrial Control Systems Capabilities Enhancement Act of 2021 today. […]

Over at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), the agency is working on connecting the U.S. Army with innovative commercial technology companies as part of a big push for modernization, with many defense projects dealing with large-scale data. […]

Brandon Wales, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) today defended the value of CISA’s EINSTEIN cyber defense program against criticism leveled by the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and suggested that the program be improved rather than scrapped. […]

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) is seeking industry input for an upcoming solicitation for technical support for a cloud-based data lake. […]

The Department of Treasury is using emerging technologies – namely blockchain – to reduce the reporting burden on U.S. Federal grants issued by the agency. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued a report on strengthening the Federal science and technology (S&T) workforce to compete for talent with the private sector and address factors affecting the Federal work environment, and found that the government has been slow in some cases to implement GAO’s previous recommendations that would help boost the S&T workforce. […]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is in urgent need of modernization – one that includes reorganization, funding, and an overhaul of the agency’s current mission and staff, according to a recent report from the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). […]

The Department of Defense has named Danielle Metz the permanent Deputy CIO (DCIO) for the agency’s information enterprise, the agency announced March 17. Metz has held the DCIO position in an acting capacity since last December. […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued an update to its quest for a cloud-based Common Enterprise Loan Origination and Servicing (CELOS) platform. […]

With many Federal agencies moving to a mostly or entirely remote work environment in 2020, keeping workplaces and data secure and safe from breaches was harder than ever before. New research from the Ponemon Institute – which focuses on Federal information and privacy management – revealed just how widespread data breaches have been in the last two years. […]

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas addressed a range of questions about the nation’s cybersecurity and spoke on how to better secure Federal networks in a March 17 House Homeland Security Committee hearing. […]

At the heart of artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), and other emerging technology implementation for the Department of Energy (DoE), National Science Foundation, and General Services Administration is sharing innovation, considering change management, and understand the business problems at hand, experts from the organizations said today. […]

Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat explained today that Federal IT policymakers are devoting considerable effort toward how to share and otherwise re-use across government the applications of automation technologies that Federal agencies have been developing on their own. […]

The demand for reliable and affordable broadband service has skyrocketed in the last year as Americans began relying on the internet for telework, distancing learning, and telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many Americans – both urban and rural – have lacked either access or sufficient connection strength during the health crisis. […]

Dave Zvenyach, director of the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Technology Transformation Services (TTS) organization, today detailed a range of projects that will benefit from the $150 million of new funding provided for TTS’ Federal Citizen Service Fund under the American Rescue Plan Act that became law last week. […]

A bipartisan group of senators has introduced the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) IT Reform Act, which aims to increase congressional oversight of agency IT and would require VA to provide reports on IT projects before they begin. […]

The White House said today the Federal government’s Unified Coordination Group (UCG) of intelligence and law enforcement agencies responding to the Microsoft Exchange hack now includes private sector firms. […]

Officials from General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) and VMware recently detailed key advantages of the integration of VMware’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) technology into the milCloud 2.0 environment that GDIT manages for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). […]

The Biden administration is still hashing through its consideration of who to appoint as National Cyber Director, but is due to conclude a review of how it should proceed on the position in the next several weeks. […]