In a coordinated effort across three district courts, the Department of Justice unsealed indictments this week in three separate cases against Iran-based individuals all alleged to have committed cyber intrusions on U.S.-based networks. […]
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Office of Field Operations has launched its new biometrics entry/exit website to provide a communications channel for promoting facial recognition comparison technology and biometric information. […]
Members of the congressionally-mandated National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) told a House panel on Sept. 17 that “bolder action” is necessary to bring sufficient digital talent into the government, and recommended the creation of a United States Digital Services Academy to meet that need. […]
Despite the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of State has managed to meet or be on track for the majority of its Q3 FY2020 goals set in its Agency Priority Goal Action Plan for IT Modernization as part of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). […]
Three officials with milCloud 2.0 highlighted a range of successful customer use and migration cases to the cloud service at the first-ever milCloud 2.0 Virtual Bootcamp Event on September 10, organized by General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) and MeriTalk. Powered by GDIT, milCloud 2.0 connects cloud service offerings to Department of Defense (DoD) networks, and provides […]
Rory Kinney, Services Executive at the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) Operations Center, praised the operational balance that milCloud 2.0 services can bring to Department of Defense (DoD) organizations looking to move to cloud services, and forecasted that milCloud 2.0 is in line for a FedRAMP certification upgrade early next year. […]
The July 2020 update of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) assured Feds that modernization efforts are continuing on despite pandemic disruptions, and the latest update on Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goals released today reveals agencies are still on track to meet key milestones across goals. […]
FBI Director Chris Wray said on Sept. 16 that his agency hasn’t seen any attempts thus far by foreign actors to attack the U.S. voter registration databases in the run-up to the November elections, or any attempt to tamper with vote counts. […]
Michael Rigas, Acting Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), outlined his priorities for the next President’s Management Agenda (PMA) at today’s ACT-IAC Shared Services Summit, including investing in emerging technology and data management. […]
Officials from the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center met with military and defense personnel from a dozen other nations this week to discuss the use of artificial intelligence for military purposes. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have identified an Iran-based cyber actor that is exploiting a virtual private network and targeting several Federal agencies, according to a joint advisory released this week. […]
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) official said on Sept. 16 that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is taking action on several major IT modernization and cybersecurity issues that GAO has flagged in recent years, but that the agency still has a lot of work to do to address many of them. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has provided an update on its efforts to advance Data Center and Cloud Optimization (DCC). […]
Josh Corman, the former chief security officer at PTC who joined the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in July as a Visiting Researcher to support the agency’s COVID-19 response effort, warned on Sept. 16 that any significant delay in distributing coronavirus vaccines – by malicious hackers or otherwise – could endanger the lives of millions of people. […]
A new study shows that the transition to 5G wireless services will create an additional 4.6 million jobs in the United States by 2034 – and that the move to the latest generation of wireless technology has created over 100,000 jobs already since last year. […]
Gen. Paul Nakasone, who heads both the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, today expressed confidence in the country’s ability to conduct safe and secure elections in November, while also warning that foreign influence operations pose an ongoing challenge for the U.S. […]
The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced members of the steering committee for the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, a group designed to collaborate on research, standards, and workforce initiatives in quantum information science. […]
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said today that new technologies are changing the “character of warfare” – a shift that he said requires adjustments both abroad and at home to funding priorities. […]
Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Robin Kelly, D-Ill., have introduced a resolution in the House that would create a national artificial intelligence strategy. […]
The Federal government has been designating more Quality Service Management Offices (QSMOs) across agencies to streamline its approach to shared services, and General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Emily Murphy and Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat are saying that both current and future QSMOs are taking a customer-centric approach to their duties. […]
The State Department is turning to the private sector for more information on leveraging managed security services with each of its cloud architectures, including Software As A Service (SAAS), Platform As A Service (PAAS), and Infrastructure As A Service (IAAS). […]
In the wake of a data breach at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that exposed the personal information of 46,000 veterans, Deputy CIO and Principal Assistant Secretary Dominic Cussatt highlighted data security and privacy to serve the veteran community as a key tenet of the agency’s transformation efforts. […]
One of the Licensed Partner Publishers selected last week to provide training materials for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Accreditation Body told MeriTalk this week he expects that some of the training materials will be publicly released beginning next month. […]
Threat detection and response services provider Trustwave has launched its Trustwave Fusion platform on Amazon Web Services GovCloud – letting Federal agencies and government contractors take advantage of the cloud-native cybersecurity platform to combat ever-changing security threats. […]
Data offers extraordinary power – and no two organizations harness this power better than the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). These two groups rallied around a shared goal – to leverage technology to improve the lives of veterans and citizens alike. […]
The House passed the Internet of Things (IoT) Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020 yesterday and as it moves to the other chamber with support from bipartisan senators, leaders of the IoT cyber legislation are looking ahead to what this legislation could mean for IoT manufacturers and American privacy. […]
Reps. Bill Foster, D-Ill., John Katko, R-N.Y., Jim Langevin, D-R.I. and Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga. on Sept. 11 introduced legislation to improve the nation’s digital identity infrastructure. […]
With Federal agencies increasingly turning to cloud service providers, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the same time is looking to increase visibility across government and secure networks. […]
A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) survey finds that 56 of 90 Federal agencies surveyed reported using Internet of Things (IoT) devices, while 13 reported that they are not using IoT devices and do not plan to use them for a variety of reasons, including insufficient return on investment. […]
MeriTalk, ACT-IAC, and the Partnership for Public Service are issuing a call to the Federal IT community for participants in several virtual roundtable groups that will formulate operating and policy recommendations to promote stronger and more resilient government operations to advance the nation’s post-pandemic recovery. […]