Bills introduced in the House and Senate yesterday would put a formal end to a National Security Agency program that has collected communications records metadata of U.S. citizens for intelligence and law enforcement use, following unconfirmed reports that NSA and the Trump administration are no longer interested in continuing the program. […]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Wednesday that Office Depot agreed to pay $25 million to settle allegations that the company “tricked customers into buying millions of dollars’ worth of computer repair and technical services by deceptively claiming their software had found malware symptoms on the customers’ computers.” Support.com, Office Depots’ software supplier, agreed to pay $10 million to settle the same allegations. […]
Experts and members of the defense industrial base shared the challenges they face in maintaining a strong cyber posture and a secure supply chain with the Senate Armed Services Cybersecurity Subcommittee on Tuesday, alarming the senators listening to their challenges. […]
Reps. John Katko, R-N.Y., Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., introduced a bill yesterday to create a 35-person advisory committee within the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency so that cyber professionals across different industries can help make suggestions on cybersecurity policies and programs. The National Technology Security Coalition, […]
Senators and healthcare stakeholders juggled issues of expanding healthcare record access while at the same time keeping those records secure during a Senate Healthcare, Education Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on the 21st Century Cures Act (CURES) Tuesday. […]
The U.S. Army, which has been putting a lot of work into its electronic warfare systems, is now turning to artificial intelligence to make those systems work.The service’s Cyber Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA) teams and other soldiers conducting electronic warfare (EW) have a lot of information to sift through as data comes in from an array of sensors and other sources, ranging from satellite to cellphone communications. All that data is intended to go to one computer screen, which can become cluttered, to say the least. […]
A bill introduced by three senior senators would require the White House to develop a strategy to ensure the security of 5G wireless systems and infrastructure, but would also block the executive branch from recommending that 5G or subsequent generations of mobile communications infrastructure be “nationalized” by the government – a possibility that has been floated in recent weeks by an official connected with the Trump campaign organization. […]
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. […]
The military and the intelligence community are still finding strong collaboration from industry partners on artificial intelligence and data sharing, said two prominent officials on Thursday. […]
Senate Democrats took steps to tackle election security this week, first by looking to investigate voting machines, and then by unanimously signing off on a Senate version of the House’s H.R. 1, the “For the People Act” yesterday. […]
The White House today released an executive order authorizing the promised 1.9 percent pay raise for Federal civilian employees for 2019, including retroactive pay increases to January 1. […]
The Senate Small Business Committee unanimously approved two bills that aim to bolster small business cybersecurity yesterday. […]
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. […]
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. […]
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). […]
“Blockchain isn’t necessarily a revolution. It’s an evolution.” […]
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. […]
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. […]
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. […]
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. […]
A bipartisan bill introduced today in the Senate would support cybersecurity assistance to help senators and their staff members protect their personal devices from attackers. […]
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. […]
House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., in a letter dated yesterday, rejected the Pentagon’s intent to transfer $1 billion to the Department of Homeland Security to fund construction of southern border barriers. […]