Dr. Laurie Locascio, the White House’s nominee to be the next director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), told senators this week that she will prioritize cybersecurity of internet of things (IoT) devices, and bridging the cyber workforce gap if she is confirmed to head the agency. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity Talent Management System (CTMS) is set to kick off on November 15 with around 150 positions to start with, Angela Bailey, DHS’ chief human capital officer, said Oct. 20 during the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Cybersecurity Summit. […]
The U.S. Army released its Digital Transformation Strategy (ADTS) on October 20, representing a critical component of the branch’s overarching technology modernization effort. […]
The House of Representatives on October 20 passed the bipartisan Secure Equipment Act, which would prevent equipment manufactured by Chinese state-backed firms such as Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, and Dahua from being further utilized and marketed in the United States. […]
House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., chairman of the National Security Subcommittee, are pressing the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to figure out a fix for the backlog of records requests at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC), and suggested IT upgrades as a possible solution. […]
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive shift in the Federal workplace, first pushing the majority of the workforce to virtual environments, and then leading to the rise of hybrid environments. Robin Carnahan, General Services Administration (GSA) administrator, said this week the time is now to reimagine how people work. […]
There are many facets to Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM), from building trust with vendors and users to assessing manufacturing specs. During a virtual summit hosted by FCW on Oct. 20, current and former officials from NASA explained the must-have factors in the agency’s SCRM to decide what products are safe to use for applications. […]
Nickolas Guertin, who President Biden nominated to be the Department of Defense’s (DoD) next director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), sees testing for cyber threats and building cyber testing into the test and evaluation process a priority for the next DOT&E. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken on a number of recent initiatives to build a diverse cyber workforce, which DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly outlined today during the third week of the CISA Cybersecurity Summit. […]
Data experts Eileen Vidrine, chief data officer (CDO) at the U.S. Air Force, and Jeremy Wilson, multi-factor authentication statewide program manager for the State of Texas, gathered on Oct. 19 at the Dell Technologies North America Forum to share their insights on data protection measures and the importance of keeping data secure. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will soon be without Acting Director Shalanda Young for a little, as she is expecting to give birth in the next few weeks, an OMB spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk. […]
According to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), one of the five IT systems the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) uses for collecting taxes, distributing refunds, and other objectives may not be complete until 2030. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced today that it has awarded $2 million to bring cybersecurity training programs to rural communities and diverse populations. […]
Federal cyber leaders and government agencies are pushing forward with Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) and Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management (C-SCRM) initiatives to address vulnerabilities and prevent further incidents from compromising critical systems. […]
Government agencies continue to modernize IT environments putting data to work for employees, citizens, and the warfighter. During a webinar hosted by Dell Technologies on Oct 19, Federal chief intelligence officers (CIOs) shared best practices for selecting the right infrastructure for high-value workloads.
The Senate Appropriations Committee is lending its tacit support for President Biden’s proposed 2.7 percent pay increase for Federal employees in 2022, according to appropriations legislation released by the committee this week. […]
The Senate Appropriations Committee released the remaining nine fiscal year (FY) 2022 funding bills and included various funding bumps for cybersecurity, as well as funding for artificial intelligence (AI) and microchip development programs. […]
The Senate Appropriations Committee released nine appropriations bills for fiscal year (FY) 2022 on October 18 including a Homeland Security funding bill that would give the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) a 30 percent budget increase over FY2021 levels, to $2.638 billion. […]
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said today that the Pentagon, as well as the rest of the Federal government, needs to adopt a problem-solving mindset in order to succeed in innovation in a rapidly changing technological landscape. […]
Agency (CISA) provides insight into what Federal buyers will be looking for in technology central to the Biden-Harris administration’s network visibility-focused cybersecurity executive order, specifically on network endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities. […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it will hold a listening session for Tribal leaders, staff, and outreach partners to inform participants about the commission’s efforts to increase Tribal libraries’ participation in the E-Rate Program. […]
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s proposed Fiscal Year 2022 Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) funding bill proposes no new funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), which at the moment is flush with cash and in the process of farming out $1 billion of funding approved under the American Rescue Plan Act to help Federal agencies modernize their IT systems and improve cybersecurity. […]
The emergence of adversarial artificial intelligence (AI) requires special attention. AI users need to understand the threat space and organize responsible AI mitigations, said Pamela Isom, director of the Artificial Intelligence and Technology Office (AITO) at the Department of Energy (DoE), on Oct. 18 at the AI World virtual summit. […]
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTT) programs awarded over $3 billion in contracts to small businesses in fiscal year (FY) 2020, but those awards were not been consistently issued in a timely fashion, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report. […]
The Defense Digital Service (DDS) is repurposing its automated background investigations prototype to focus on insider threats, which includes a name change from the System for Automated Background Evaluation and Review (SABER) to the System for Insider Threat Hindrance (SITH). […]
The Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development arm of the DoD, is working on an artificial intelligence project that goes beyond the simple augmentation of work process and is focusing on the symbiosis of human and machine, according to a DARPA official. […]
Artificial intelligence (AI) has wholly transformed the way employees are recruited, hired, trained, evaluated, and even fired. However, employers must find the right division of labor between AI and human resources personnel between using AI to improve human decision-making and delegating decision-making entirely to algorithms, said Keith Sonderling, commissioner for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), on Oct 18 at the AI World virtual summit. […]
For many government agencies, Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) technology has formed the core of their networks for decades. Because many mission-critical operations run on TDM services, organizations often took an ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach to TDM. Today, TDM technologies are at end of life – or beyond – and expertise in them is quickly dwindling. […]
The Treasury Department released a new report that found ransomware victims paid $590 million during the first six months of 2021, which is more than the value reported for the entirety of 2020 ($416 million). […]
The General Services Administration’s (GSA) project for further development of its Login.gov authentication and identity proofing services won by far the largest share of funding from the Technology Modernization Fund’s (TMF) awards totaling $311 million announced late last month. […]