The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that information on the efficacy of identity theft insurance coverage is limited in a report yesterday, adding that it is unnecessary to mandate Federal entities to offer certain levels of identity theft services. […]

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Machine learning AI modernization

Pilots and projects involving artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are producing some early wins for Federal agencies in procurement, evaluation, and other areas, government officials said on Thursday. […]

Auburn University has been awarded $564,988 total for two research and development projects to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of (very good) dogs who are trained to detect explosives. […]

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Women make up less than a quarter of the cybersecurity workforce and while efforts are underway to boost that number, success has been limited. New America, a non-partisan think tank, released a report on Thursday detailing the current status of women in the cyber workforce, efforts to increase the number of women in the field, and steps that can be taken to improve hiring and retention across the industry. […]

Robot

An important step in advancing artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives includes fortifying algorithms for AI, which are often brittle and “not good,” said Dr. John Beieler, program manager at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). […]

Cyber Security Brainstorm

In a report released Wednesday, Kaspersky Lab found that malicious activity targeting industrial control systems (ICS) impacted nearly half (47.2 percent) of all computers under its protection in 2018, up from 44 percent in 2017. […]

In the race to exascale computing, it looks like the Department of Energy (DoE) will be the first to reach the pole. In a couple of years, the department plans on opening a supercomputer, known as Aurora, capable of performing a quintillion calculations per second, five times faster than the current champ. But in addition to beating the Chinese and everyone else to the exascale summit, Aurora will be significant for incorporating artificial intelligence into its repertoire, while pursuing a range of scientific and real-world problems. […]

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, better known as Europol, met with the European Cybercrime Centre Advisory Groups on Financial Services, Internet Security and Communication Providers to discuss phishing attacks and how to fight and prevent them. […]

President Trump on Tuesday issued an Executive Order that puts into place a range of policy actions to increase awareness of the danger that electromagnetic pulse (EMP) episodes pose to electric grids and  technology networks, and the critical infrastructure assets that depend on them – and to at least soften the potentially disastrous impact of naturally occurring or man-made EMPs.  […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) secretary outlined how it will use its proposed budget to improve veteran healthcare and modernize its largely outdated information technology (IT) systems at a hearing today before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies. […]

Pentagon Military Defense DoD

House Budget Committee members threw a series of sharp questions and critiques at Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist today about the Defense Department’s (DoD’s) proposed technology spending plans after he said DoD is prioritizing IT modernization, better cybersecurity, and tech innovation. […]

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Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work wants the U.S. military to take the competitive advantage in new-age warfare by going all-in on artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives. […]

Due to a successful challenge in court, the General Services Administration (GSA) has rescinded all awards on the $15 billion Alliant 2 Small Business governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC), the agency announced yesterday. […]

White House

President Trump on March 26 said he was extending by one year–to April 2020–the national emergency regarding cybersecurity threats that was declared by President Obama in 2015 under Executive Order 13694, and amended in 2016 by Executive Order 13757. […]

Congress must take action to ensure that consumer data is being adequately protected at consumer reporting agencies (CRAs), witnesses said at Tuesday’s House Committee on Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy hearing. […]

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State Department

The State Department now has its first permanent CIO in more than a year. Stuart McGuigan was announced on Tuesday as the new CIO and head of the agency’s Bureau of Information Resource Management.  […]

DoD

Through multiple efforts in both the executive and legislative branches of government, the Federal government is focused on supporting and adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, said Federal CIO Suzette Kent on Wednesday. […]

Machine learning AI-min

When it comes to getting artificial intelligence systems to be more “human,” robots apparently have to learn to walk before they can run.The Pentagon’s top research arm recently hit a milestone in enabling a machine to learn without having to go through a lot of reprogramming at each stage, like they do now. And they did it with a robotic limb teaching itself to walk. […]

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Panelists representing small businesses advocated for Federal uniformity and preempt over state data privacy laws and against data protection regulations that would disproportionately burden smaller companies at a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade, and Consumer Protection hearing today. […]

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In one of many budget hearings taking place on the Hill this week, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government heard from Russell T. Vought, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regarding the agency’s FY2020 budget request. While the bulk of the hearing didn’t address IT issues, Vought did touch on IT spending, IT modernization, and the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). […]

Without a clear governance structure, the implementation of the DATA Act (the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014) has suffered and new guidance might not be reaching agencies, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last week. […]

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