In the wake of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report encouraging the Departments of Education and Homeland Security (DHS) to update K-12 cybersecurity guidance, several Democrat senators have written to both agencies urging them to heed GAO’s recommendations, and establish critical infrastructure council structures to advance the issue. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has allocated an additional $42 million in the second round of funding for its COVID-19 Telehealth Program, bringing the program total to $166 million in funding. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it is ready to authorize nearly $709,060,159 in its fourth round of funding for new broadband deployments through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. […]

President Biden on Nov. 11 signed the Secure Equipment Act, which will 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. […]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released a new guide to telework and remote work for Federal agencies on November 12, in response to increased agency interest in working from home. […]

Sponsors of two major pieces of legislation that would make formative changes to the way that private sector companies report cyberattacks to the government – and how Federal government agencies conduct their own cyber defenses – are hitching their hopes for passage to annual defense spending legislation that traditionally gets strong bipartisan support from lawmakers. […]

The White House’s Safer Federal Workforce Task Force released new guidance this week to align with Federal contractors’ delayed vaccine deadline. […]

While the COVID-19 pandemic pushed forward massive advancements in telehealth, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has taken it one step – or more – further and is using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in nearly 50 sites for clinical care, an official said Nov. 8. […]

With K-12 educational institutions increasingly targeted by ransomware and other cyber attacks during the coronavirus pandemic, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is pushing the Department of Education to update its plans – which currently date from 2010 – for addressing cyber risks faced by schools. […]

NASA has awarded Halvik Corp. a $148.8 million task order to support information technology and customer service operations for NASA’s governmentwide information technology (IT) contract vehicle. […]

Officials from the Department of Defense (DoD) emphasized this week scaling cloud and data capabilities to empower warfighters operating at the network edge is crucial to meet the Pentagon’s mission needs. […]

With cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated at disguising themselves as legitimate network users, a top Defense Department (DoD) IT official said this week that the Pentagon’s move to zero trust security architectures gives the agency a “fighting chance” to detect and eject hackers before they can do much damage. […]

 Following a November 10 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the U.S. will sign onto a three-year old framework offered by the French government as an international framework for cooperation on cyber and supply chain security. […]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has embarked on a new initiative to assess the status of geographic information systems (GIS) within the 911 community, with a goal of defining what is required to achieve interoperable GIS data sharing nationwide. […]

After its passage by the House of Representatives Nov. 5, President Biden plans to sign the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on Monday, Nov. 15, authorizing billions of new funding for broadband and cybersecurity, in addition to traditional infrastructure, the administration announced Nov. 10. […]

Dr. Brian Hermann has been appointed the new director of the Cybersecurity and Analytics Directorate at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). […]

The U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has awarded CACI International a five-year single-award task order worth up to $785 million for information warfare and electronic warfare solutions and services. […]

The National Guard has hired Martin Akerman as its first-ever chief data officer, according to Akerman’s LinkedIn. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) is looking to industry for help in bolstering the cybersecurity of U.S. allies and partner nations, said DoD’s Mieke Eoyang, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, at C4ISRNET’s CyberCon 2021 event on November 10. […]

The keys to establishing a robust cybersecurity framework for defense agencies include having strong partnerships with industry, innovation based on best practices, and efforts to cultivate a strong workforce. […]

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly said November 10 that the agency’s Binding Operational Directive (BOD) issued earlier this month to Federal agencies to remediate against a list of 300 known exploited cyber vulnerabilities appears to be getting a good reception from government and industry as an effective roadmap on how to prioritize action against prevalent cyber threats. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is collecting feedback and opinions regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition between now and December 6. […]

While Congress has made some headway in recent years to modernize the way the national legislature takes advantage of technology, maintaining a bipartisan focus on modernization goals is the necessary ingredient to making further progress, current and former Capitol Hill officials said during a November 9 Partnership for Public Service online event. […]

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) – the largest union for Federal employees – is pushing for Federal workers to have the same extended deadline as Federal government contractors to receive their COVID-19 vaccine. […]

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Resilience and Food Security is looking for feedback for a planned climate adaption support activity that will provide a suite of services and products to USAID Missions, Washington, D.C. Operating Units, and partners to support adaption mainstreaming, programming, and scaling to effect change. […]

The Department of Transportation has been tasked with seeking private sector input to create standardized data exchange requirements for goods movement in the transportation supply chain, according to a White House announcement of administration plans to fund ports and waterways improvements aimed at improving supply chain resiliency. […]

Federal agency CIOs agreed during a November 9 panel discussion at ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation conference that the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is a vital source of funding for IT modernization and cybersecurity projects, and said they want more of it from Congress. […]

With an international focus on climate change after the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, Department of Energy (DoE) CIO Ann Dunkin said today that data center consolidation is helping to reduce the agency’s carbon footprint, and pointed to the further use of scalable cloud-native apps as the next step in that campaign. […]

According to a recently released Tripwire survey, most security professionals in the private and public sector described their zero trust security adoption as either progressing, or even well-developed, but also in need of more work. […]

Palo Alto Networks recently issued a report detailing a targeted attack campaign that leveraged leased infrastructure in the U.S. to scan hundreds of vulnerable organizations, which compromised at least nine global entities in the technology, defense, healthcare, energy, and education sectors. […]