The General Services Administration (GSA) is looking at government-wide telecommunications and IT acquisitions worth $100 million to ensure that climate risk is addressed in the supply chains for those services. […]
The White House will host an international ransomware gathering next week aimed at improving international cooperation among governments in the fight against ransomware-driven cyberattacks, said Jeff Greene, chief of cyber response and policy for the White House’s National Security Council. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) has completed the market research phase for its proposed multi-vendor Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) cloud contract, which the Pentagon announced in July following its decision to cancel the single-vendor $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud services contract. […]
Paul Cunningham, chief information security officer (CISO) at the Department of Veterans (VA), explained this week how the agency is addressing cybersecurity vulnerabilities to protect its users and their health care and financial data as the agency has turned increasingly to providing telehealth services for veterans. […]
In light of this year’s cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline and other critical infrastructure targets in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) component is prepping a new cybersecurity directive covering “high-risk” railroad operations, according to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. […]
With an increased focus on cybersecurity after a spate of high-profile cyberattacks on U.S. government and business organizations since late last year, members of Congress are continuing to call for a clearly defined national cyber deterrent policy. Three prime movers on cybersecurity legislation Congress – Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and Reps. John Katko, R-N.Y., and Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y. – explained the need to codify a cyber deterrence policy at the Aspen Cyber Summit Oct. 6. […]
Reps. John Katko, R-N.Y., and Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., introduced a bipartisan bill in the House this week that aims to protect systemically important critical infrastructure (SICI) from cyberattacks. […]
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee voted today to approve the Cyber Incident Reporting Act, which would require critical infrastructure operators to report cyberattacks to the Federal government, and require most government and business entities to report to the government if they make a ransomware payment. […]
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted unanimously today to advance for full Senate consideration of a bill that would extensively overhaul the 2014 version of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) that sets cybersecurity requirements for Federal civilian agencies. […]
The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) has successfully enrolled all Department of Defense (DoD) service members, civilians, and contractors with a security clearance, meaning that 3.6 million people are now in DCSA’s continuous vetting program. […]
In September, the Department of the Treasury took a series of actions to combat ransomware, including sanctioning a virtual currency exchange for facilitating financial transactions for ransomware actors. Treasury’s actions follow a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security directive requiring owners and operators of TSA-designated critical pipelines to protect against ransomware attacks, and discussions between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin about ransomware attacks from Russian soil. […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has driven home the importance of international collaboration in science to solve global problems, and witnesses at a House Space, Science, and Technology Committee hearing on October 5 emphasized the importance of balancing the benefits of open collaboration in science with the pressing need for information security in the research enterprise. […]
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said today the Department of Justice (DoJ) is launching two new initiatives to combat cyber threats, including the creation of a National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, and a civil cyber fraud initiative that will fine Federal contractors who don’t follow required cybersecurity standards. […]
The House on September 29 passed the K-12 Cybersecurity Act – a piece of bipartisan legislation from Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., with a companion bill in the House led by Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I. The bill has already been approved by the Senate, and has been sent to the White House for President Biden’s signature. […]
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has created a new Hosting and Compute Center (HaCC), and has named Sharon Woods, the executive director of DISA’s Cloud Computing Program Office (CCPO), as the HaCC acting director, a DISA spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk. […]
The Department of Defense’s (DoD) Responsible AI Lead at the Joint AI Center (JAIC), Alka Patel, left her post Oct. 1, she announced in a LinkedIn post. […]
The $1 billion of new funding that the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) received earlier this year under the American Rescue Plan Act was welcomed by chief information officers (CIOs) from numerous agencies, but many CIOs are saying the new infusion of money is not enough for IT modernization needs. […]
Federal IT leaders are balancing IT spend and project prioritization while trying to drive digital transformation to modernize government operations and meet the needs of the American people. It’s a monumental task, made even more challenging in disparate and siloed working environments. Taking a holistic approach to digital transformation in government requires a shift in mindsets. […]
Federal CIO Clare Martorana emphasized today that the road to Federal agency IT improvements runs not only through agency CIO offices, but also needs to benefit from support from the entire organization’s executive suite. […]
All civilian employees of the Department of Defense (DoD) have until November 22 to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a new memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded Peraton a nearly $2.7 billion dollar contract to aid the agency’s move to the cloud, according to an Oct. 4 award announcement posted to SAM.gov. […]
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is streamlining its sprawling case management system into a single, digital system. According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGA) report, the program has struggled to meet user expectations and accessibility requirements mandated by law. […]
The Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have unveiled their long-awaited legislation to update the 2014 Federal Information Security Modernization Act that provides cybersecurity marching orders to Federal civilian agencies. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), partnering with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has released new guidance on mitigating security risks to advance quantum computing technology. […]
Bryan Rosensteel has spent more than a decade working with identity in the Federal government. As a Federal solutions architect at identity services provider Ping Identity, he advises government agencies on best practices for deploying zero trust security architecture. When President Biden issued the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity (EO), Rosensteel was positively giddy about its potential to transform the way government secures data and operations. MeriTalk sat down with Rosensteel to explore the letter and the spirit of the EO, how centralized identity, credential, and access management (ICAM) can help agencies get to zero trust, and why agencies shouldn’t inherently trust anything – not even technology. […]
As the cyber threats we face become more diverse across the nation and globe, security, and IT operations teams must encompass diverse perspectives. For MeriTalking’s first installment of the “Human Side of Cyber” series, MeriTalk’s Nicole Burdette sits down with Teddra Burgess, Senior Vice President, Public Sector at Tanium to dive into the importance of having diverse perspectives and experiences on an organization’s cyber response team. […]
The newly created Made in America Office has set up an official website in an effort to promote transparency in Federal procurement by publishing proposed waivers and outcomes to Made in America laws. […]
The Federal government is failing to attract young talent and will need to quickly replace a huge wave of retiring employees within the next few years, according to Kiran Ahuja, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Don Beyer, D-Va. […]
The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate made official over the weekend what had become obvious by late last week: the hoped-for late September votes on two big Federal infrastructure funding bills were sliding into October. […]
A sampling of Federal agencies’ efforts to provide remote access for telework during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that each of the agencies was able to put the right technologies in place to accomplish that goal, but that several had not fully addressed relevant guidance for securing remote access systems, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found. […]