Before the COVID-19 pandemic forced hundreds of thousands of Federal employees to remote work environments, zero trust was mainly a concept in the minds of cybersecurity experts that had not been fully actualized. But as telework has become the new normal, enabling zero trust capabilities is a key goal for various agencies. […]
With Federal agencies moving to the cloud and adapting to agency needs, the move away from a network-focused viewpoint compliments a zero-trust architecture, said IT officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). […]
The Defense Department (DoD) has broadened the scope of its request for information (RFI) as it looks to move its databases and entire operational system for biometric surveillance capabilities into a cloud environment. […]
Necessity is the mother of invention – and innovation. That’s never been more clear than this year, as governments worldwide are faced with one, all-encompassing requirement: To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The need for strong leadership and accelerated modernization has never been so evident. When the pandemic struck in mid-March, critical government processes were forced to evolve almost overnight to meet the needs of the American people. […]
GovTech4Biden is going away, but the next stage of the larger impetus that propelled the successful effort is just beginning. […]
For the U.S. Army, the mission drives everything. The Army is creating ready, prompt, and sustained warfighters to protect the nation – but two decades into the 21st century, war has evolved and challenged the department to quickly modernize and adapt to a changing landscape. […]
The Defense Department (DoD) is putting in place additional workplace restrictions for the Pentagon Reservation area over the Thanksgiving weekend – effective at 5:00 a.m. EST on Nov. 26 – due to the increased spike COVID-19 cases in the National Capital Region. […]
In a report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of State that identifies the most significant management and performance challenges, the OIG found information security and management as one of those seven challenges. […]
Any good healthcare provider will tell you that early diagnosis of a problem can lead to better outcomes down the road – and IT leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proved the enduring truth of that adage in the agency’s quick adjustment to a telework footing as the coronavirus pandemic emerged earlier this year. […]
FedRAMP released its plan to align with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) latest update to SP 800-53, Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations, Revision 5 (Rev5). […]
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH) is seeking to better inform the direction of efforts to improve access to emerging technologies and healthcare services to improve health outcomes for aging Americans. […]
The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), a component agency of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), struggled to keep its disaster recovery plan in place during COVID-19, failing to store off-site backups and not conducting testing, according to a report released by the EPA’s inspector general. […]
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is looking to manage the growing number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with augmented reality tools to ensure safety in the air and visibility for air traffic management. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has released a “Customer Experience (CX) Cookbook” for Federal agencies that features key ingredients and recipes for embedding CX in Federal services and for cooking up CX best practices. […]
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LMNL) has turned to a mobile app to let the public time travel to the 1940s. LMNL announced that it has re-released its mobile app, The Secret City: Project Y, which allows users to explore Los Alamos, N.M., as it was during the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is looking for cloud hosting for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response’s (ASPR) website. […]
The dark web has long provided a safe haven for cybercriminals to plot illicit activities, often with huge implications for the government. To stay ahead of cybercriminals, Federal agencies have to investigate threats and emerging adversaries on their networks – but that is easier said than done. […]
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is looking to move its current filing platform to a cloud-based platform, according to a Nov. 23 request for information (RFI). In the RFI, the FEC said it is looking to create a “modern, state of the art, cloud-based, secure, platform-independent electronic filing data application.” […]
The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) plans to modernize a key system and move it to the cloud to support better information sharing, improved data management, and enhanced security, according to a notice in the Federal Register released November 23. […]
A bill introduced in the Senate Nov. 18 by Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio would charge the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with reporting to Congress on the impact of the Chinese government’s influence in setting global standards for emerging technologies. […]
House and Senate leaders have asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to provide multiple briefings to members of Congress on how the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is going about implementing President Trump’s controversial executive order to create a new “Schedule F” classification for Federal employees in policy-making positions. […]
The Biden-Harris transition team confirmed late Monday that General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Emily Murphy has officially ascertained President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris as the apparent winners of the 2020 presidential election. […]
The crown jewels of Federal agency network and data assets need better protection from cyber adversaries, but the jury is still out as to whether and when the government’s primary security program to protect them – the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program – will provide the kind of protections that those assets require. […]
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, both the public and private sector are turning to telework to help stem the spread of the virus. This reliance on telework has increased investment in cloud computing services, which will cause the cloud market to grow 18.4 percent in 2021, according to a Nov. 17 report from Gartner. […]
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., urged the White House to strengthen cybersecurity defenses for the U.S. healthcare system amid concerns of cyberattacks intended to steal COVID-19 treatment and vaccine research. […]
House Democratic committee leaders didn’t get the briefing they wanted on Monday from General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Emily Murphy on why she has not yet made a judgement that Joe Biden is the apparent winner of the 2020 presidential election, so they pressed for a briefing session on Tuesday. […]
President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris said today they plan to nominate Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security, and Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). […]
The U.S. Army has appointed Raj Iyer as its new CIO, according to a LinkedIn post from Iyer. […]
Federal agencies are leveraging past work on authorizations to operate (ATO) to bring in more cloud tools covered by the Federal Risk Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Brian Conrad, FedRAMP Cybersecurity Program Manager. […]
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) guidance on Federal workforce rotational cybersecurity assignments envisions 120-day rotation assignments to other agencies, and lists several programs that rotations may run through, according to a Nov. 18 memo to agency heads from Michael Rigas, Acting Director of OPM. […]