Federal Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) saved the government an estimated $53 billion through investigations in fiscal year 2020, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) reported in its annual report to Congress and the President. […]

The Department of Energy (DoE) – with help from industry and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA – is kicking off a 100-day effort to improve electric infrastructure cybersecurity, the White House and DoE said today. […]

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is seeking input on evidence-building activities to inform SSA priorities – including priorities of the Biden administration – as well as input on future projects to advance SSA’s mission. […]

A bipartisan Senate bill introduced on Monday would help the United States to grow and maintain its global technology advantage against China and other competing nations. […]

Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., introduced two separate bills that aim to boost United States leadership in quantum information science (QIS). […]

We sat down with Justin Wilkins, director of engineering for U.S. Public Sector at Varonis, to discuss the importance of a zero trust security architecture, why the concept is taking off, and more importantly – how to read through all the buzz and start taking actionable steps today. […]

While House Government Operations Subcommittee members offered no firm direction on how they may try to further evolve the FITARA Scorecard, their discussions with witnesses at the April 16 hearing on version 11.0 of the scorecard issued last December brought to light a variety of Federal agency IT concerns that might come into play. […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Friday it will re-establish the Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC), with a focus on “improving 5G network security.” […]

Federal agency leaders agree that zero trust is a journey that will take time to implement but, with modern-day cyber threats, the sooner agencies implement zero trust the better. […]

President Biden intends to nominate Pamela Melroy, a former astronaut and former deputy director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to be the next deputy administrator at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the White House announced April 16. […]

As cyberattacks become ever-increasing, one thing is clear: the United States needs to strengthen its cybersecurity efforts. Federal government and private sector cyber experts sat down to discuss the future of the cyber conflict and how to prevent the next big cyberattack. […]

A handful of Democratic legislators have sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DoJ) seeking answers to what steps the agency takes to ensure predictive policing technology is effective, and whether it tests for bias and requires transparency in algorithms used in the technology. […]

The Federal government is curtailing its “surge” response to the SolarWinds Orion and Microsoft Exchange hacks after seeing improvements in patching that have helped to remediate the impacts of the cyber attacks, the Biden administration said today. […]

In a request for information (RFI), the U.S. Army said it needs an enterprise scale contractual vehicle or agreement to modernize and migrate Army applications and data into commercial cloud environments. […]

The FITARA 11.0 scorecard released in December 2020 turned out to be a pretty good report card for Federal agency IT operations. The latest set of grades marked just the second time since the House Oversight and Reform Committee started measuring agency progress against Federal Information Technology Reform Act (FITARA) and other key metrics that every agency received a passing score. […]

The top members of the House Government Operations Subcommittee indicated today that Federal IT modernization – and the role that the newly expanded Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) can play in furthering that goal – loom large in their thinking as they consider the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s ongoing tracking of Federal agency IT improvements via the FITARA Scorecard. […]

A 2019 tweak by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to the definition of a data center – and thus how the Federal government proceeds with its Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) aimed at sharply cutting the number of data centers that Federal agencies operate – is having the effect of leaving the government more vulnerable to cyberattacks, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) official concurred today. […]

On April 15, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released a discussion draft of legislation that would regulate the exportation of American citizen’s sensitive, personal information to adversarial nations. […]

The U.S. Digital Service’s (USDS) Matt Cutts announced he is stepping down as the agency’s administrator in a self-authored Medium post this week. […]

Bipartisan leadership of the House Government Operations Subcommittee introduced a bill today that would make sure Federal agency CIOs – along with chief data, financial, and human capital officers – are wrapped into the process of how agency leaders craft performance plans for their organizations. […]

The Department of Labor (DoL) recently released new guidelines on protecting $9.3 trillion in retirement benefits for over 34 million participants in contribution plans by making sure proper cybersecurity best practices are in place. […]

Running both the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command in an era of expanding cyberattacks pushes a lot of pressing issues to the top of a leader’s to-do list, but for  Gen. Paul Nakasone – who heads both organizations that are key to U.S. efforts to operate in cyberspace outside of national borders – workforce development tends to rise above the rest. […]

With information warfare growing in the competition arena, a clear strategy and a joint force provider to usher in this strategy are necessary for the United States to combat influence operations by foreign adversaries, U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall said today. […]

Three Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplements (DFARS) related to the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) are set to become permanent rules shortly, Katie Arrington, the Pentagon’s CISO for acquisition and sustainment, said April 15. […]

A senior Biden administration official dropped significant hints today about the contents of the administration’s expected executive order (EO) on cybersecurity. The coming EO has been much talked about in policy circles in recent weeks, with a consensus view that it will be released soon, but without much firm detail about its expected content. […]

Rob Brown, chief technology officer (CTO) at the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), today discussed the importance of data quality checks as well as what steps USCIS is taking to accelerate its digital modernization. […]

As promised in President Biden’s executive order today that sanctions the Russian government for the SolarWinds Orion cyberattack and other transgressions, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies published a list of five active Russian Foreign Intelligence Service cyberattack vectors that they say need network operators to defend against urgently. […]

President Biden today issued executive orders (EO) that blame, shame, and sanction the Russian government for perpetrating the SolarWinds Orion supply chain cyber attacks, and interfering with U.S. elections, among other transgressions. […]

Amid a strategic review of the deployment of its new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) officials told Congress on April 14 that the agency will not begin EHR system deployment at a second VA site until the current strategic review is completed. […]

At the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), cybersecurity is at the forefront of mission goals that include transitioning to cloud systems, a new cyber training regimen for USPTO remote examiners, and a new insider threat program, and agency official said April 14. […]