Bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate July 21 would require Federal agencies, government contractors, and critical infrastructure owners and operators to report cyber intrusions within 24 hours of discovery. […]

The House of Representatives on July 20 voted to approve the State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act July as part of a slate of cyber bills that passed under suspension of normal rules. The bill would create a $500 million-per-year grant program run by the Department of Homeland Security to help state and local governments improve their cybersecurity. […]

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce unanimously approved six cybersecurity and supply chain-related bills during a markup session on July 21. The committee’s vote sends these bills to the House floor for further consideration. […]

When U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began moving to the cloud in 2014, much of the agency’s cloud movement was “lift and shift” – simply moving workloads as-is to the cloud. Over time, IT staff trained themselves on cloud operations and began to take greater advantage of the flexibility and scalability that cloud computing offers. […]

Join MeriTalk on July 29 from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. ET for The Time is Now: Accelerating DoD Enterprise Cloud, a complimentary webinar that will explore additional findings from the study, as well as what’s preventing DoD organizations from migrating to available DoD enterprise clouds and what’s needed to accelerate adoption. […]

Department of Defense (DoD) Deputy CIO Cynthia Medoza shared her most important guiding principles to advancing the DoD enterprise, which she dubbed as getting back to the basics. […]

Federal Chief Information Security Officer  (CISO) Chris DeRusha today offered an expansive set of ideas for how Congress may undertake reform of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) of 2014 to bring the existing law up to speed with the fast-moving security improvement work underway throughout the Federal government following the release of President Biden’s cybersecurity executive order in May. […]

Recent hacks on localities’ water supply have shown the importance of cybersecurity in the water infrastructure. Witnesses sounded the alarm about water infrastructure cybersecurity and called for training and funding investments at a July 21 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. […]

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on July 20 approved and sent to the full House for consideration several bills with Federal tech implications, including measures dealing with artificial intelligence oversight, and Federal hiring for several classes of technology positions. […]

New bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate this week would staff the newly-created Office of National Cyber Director (NCD) and authorize non-reimbursable detailees for NCD to support coordinating national cybersecurity policy and strategy. […]

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce unanimously approved H.R. 550, the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021 during a markup session on July 21. The committee’s vote sends the bill to the House floor for further consideration. […]

The Department of Energy (DoE) is hoping that investing in research and development (R&D) for supercomputers will help the department achieve its clean energy goals. […]

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced that the FCC is entering into partnerships with 11 Federal, state, and local agencies to assess the delivery of Wireless Emergency Alerts in areas across the country during a planned nationwide test on August 11. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has given its first priority recommendation letter to the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), calling for the office to strengthen interagency collaboration around science and technology issues. […]

Federal CISO Chris DeRusha said today that the ongoing solicitation of Federal agency bids for money from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is drawing a lot of interest in security-related projects – one of the four primary areas that the TMF Board identified earlier this year as ones it would prioritize as it works to deploy up to $1 billion of new funding capacity from the American Rescue Plan Act. […]

The previously proposed merger by the Trump Administration of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration (GSA) will soon dissolve. The administrative resources and functions that support the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council will return to OPM after more than a year under GSA responsibilities. […]

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is requesting information from the private sector on how it might improve the way social media data is collected and archived from previous presidential administrations, according to a request for information (RFI) posted on the SAM.gov website. […]

The FedRAMP Authorization Act sponsored by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., has been nearly four years in the making without crossing the goal line. But after the House approved the bill earlier this year, Rep. Connolly said today that the House is “working in lockstep” with Senate colleagues to hopefully pass the bill in 2021. […]

The House of Representatives approved a bill July 19 that aims to improve electric power grid infrastructure cybersecurity by using public-private partnerships. The bill was passed by voice vote under suspension of the rules. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Transportation Security Administration (TSA) today issued a second Security Directive aimed at securing critical pipelines that transport hazardous liquids and natural gas from cyber intrusions, in response to recent cybersecurity threats against U.S. pipeline systems. […]

A senior Biden administration official said on July 18 that an important mandate under the administration’s Cybersecurity Executive Order – deployment of multifactor authentication and encryption technologies across Federal civilian networks – could be “fully deployed within six months.” […]

Without a secure, reliable, and trustworthy digital identity system for people, entities, and things, the increasingly digital new reality is vulnerable to attacks, threatening individual safety and national security. […]

The Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is partnering with Microsoft to use cloud-based tools and artificial intelligence (AI) to increase the scalability of ERDC’s coastal storm modeling system, ERDC announced July 14. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Office of Information and Technology is seeking a contractor to maintain an Authority to Operate (ATO) for the Social Security Numbers Reduction (SSNR) Tool in the VA Enterprise Cloud (VAEC) environment. […]

The U.S. Coast Guard expanded its telework capabilities to protect employees during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but the service branch needs to ensure it is auditing data derived from Coast Guard staff self-reporting telework use and health statuses. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released guidance outlining security measures for critical software and minimum standards for vendors’ testing of their software source code as part of the agency’s assignments under the Biden administration’s executive order (EO) on cybersecurity. […]

The Biden administration took formal steps today to pin the Microsoft Exchange software supply chain hack disclosed earlier this year on people connected with the Chinese government’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).  […]

Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., Tim Kaine, D-Va., Ben Cardin, D-Md., Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, reintroduced the Chai Suthammanont Remembrance Act on July 14, which requires government agencies to establish COVID-19 safety plans to protect Federal workers returning to the office. […]

The White House announced today it will nominate National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) veteran Laurie Locascio to serve as the next under secretary of Standards and Technology for the Department of Commerce. The post typically comes with a dual-title of NIST Director. […]

Major General Ryan Heritage was named commander of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) Cyberspace Command July 7, the unit announced. He will report directly to Gen. Paul Nakasone, who heads up the U.S. Cyber Command. […]