Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
NASA
CISA

The Senate on July 12 voted unanimously to confirm Jen Easterly as director of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Easterly will assume the role following a wave of recent cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure and businesses. […]

AI

Federal IT leaders want to see their agencies achieve enterprise-wide artificial intelligence (AI) proficiency in the next three to four years, according to a recent survey from MeriTalk underwritten by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA, “From Pilots to Proficiency: Operationalizing Federal AI.” […]

Budget Federal spending
Treasury

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has begun soliciting bids for a potential 10-year, $980 million satellite broadband contract to provide satellite communications services under the Commercial Broadband Satellite Program (CBSP), according to a request for proposals (RFP) notice posted on the SAM website. […]

Emerging tech

Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission executive vice president focused on digital issues, said today she’s “really encouraged” by recent tech-sector actions taken by President Biden to create greater competition, and is hopeful emerging technologies such as AI will create a bigger public sector market. […]

Army DoD military Defense AI

Department of Defense cybersecurity veteran Maj. Gen. Neil Hersey has been named the new deputy commanding general for Operations at Army Cyber Command. He transitioned to the role in June, after two years as commanding general at the Army Cyber Center of Excellence in Fort Gordon, Ga., according to his bio. […]

In a move to help increase law enforcement accountability, the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) is releasing $7.65 million in a competitive microgrant grant solicitation that will fund body-worn cameras (BWCs) to any law enforcement department with 50 or fewer full-time sworn personnel, rural agencies, and Federally-recognized Tribal agencies. […]

Cloud Cafe

Federal and private sector cloud experts will gather at MeriTalk’s Cloud Café on July 15 to spill the tea on the latest technologies and policies accelerating cloud implementation, collaboration, and innovation across the public sector. […]

Cyber

MeriTalk recently sat down with Matt Trudewind, senior technical marketing engineer on security at NetApp, to talk about all things ransomware. During the discussion, Matt dove into the growing threat of cyberattacks targeting Federal agencies, and walked through the critical steps needed in ransomware remediation. With this ever-increasing threat comes a need for a robust cybersecurity strategy with solutions and technology in place to address attacks both before – and after – they occur. Today, Matt shares his insights on the best ways to get to those goals. […]

President Biden

President Biden said today he was “optimistic” after speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the United States government’s expectations for cooperation from Russia in the event of ransomware attacks that emanate from Russian territory. […]

State Department

While the State Department Office of Technology Services’ (OTS) information system processes were compliant with many Department of State and Federal standards, there were some significant areas that require management attention, according to a new report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG). […]

EHR

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) investigation of the VA’s Electronic Health Records (EHR) modernization program has found an additional $2.5 billion in unreported IT infrastructure upgrade costs, which could put the program cost up to $5.1 billion more than estimated. […]

The Department of Labor’s (DoL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) does not require the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) to report data on suspected unemployment insurance (UI) fraud to either the ETO or the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), according to a July 1 OIG memo. […]

A wide-ranging executive order (EO) issued today by President Biden is aiming to boost opportunities  for small businesses by directing all Federal agencies to promote greater competition in their procurement and spending decisions, although specific marching orders to agencies to accomplish that goal have not yet been spelled out. […]

broadband 5g -min
cloud

If you’re ready to invest a couple hours of time and focus, then UniversIT is ready to deliver to you the latest information on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and military internet of things (IoMT) for government technology applications. Plus a few fringe benefits: you’ll never see a bill for our classes, and there’s no need to hike across campus in the summer heat. […]

No Category Set!

The Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) said in its newly released annual Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) report for Fiscal Year 2020 that SBA’s  information security was “not effective” last year due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. […]

The U.S. Air Force released a solicitation for proposals for its $4.79 billion NOVASTAR contract vehicle for services in research, development, and sustainment of hardware and software capabilities to support intelligence production requirements of the service branch, Department of Defense (DoD), and the intelligence community. […]

Cybersecurity cyber

A Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Inspector General (OIG) report found that 3D printers pose a cybersecurity risk to the agency, after discovering DoD employees were not properly securing the IT systems used to develop 3D products, and were unaware the 3D printers even had IT systems that could be hacked. […]

No Category Set!
video conferencing

As Federal agencies deliberate how to reopen traditional offices and the policies they will need to keep employees safe, one thing is clear: gone are the days when the cubicle was the only option for government workers. The pandemic has forced Federal agencies to rethink telework policies, remote work, and even in-office setups. […]

White House national security staff took the Biden administration’s strategic thinking on ransomware prevention to the local government mayors this week, as administration advisors continued to work through a long list of policy items aimed at curbing the attacks and making them less profitable. […]

Army DoD military Defense AI

With President Biden’s cyber executive order (EO) guiding Federal agencies towards implementing zero trust architectures, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has already created a Zero Trust Playbook to help outline the change and create guidelines, the Corps’ CIO said today. […]

After conducting its first bug bounty program last year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that it is open sourcing the Finding Exploits to Thwart Tampering (FETT) Bug Bounty evaluation platform. […]

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