A group of graduate researchers from the University of California-Berkeley trained a machine learning model to predict voter preferences using only readily available personal information, suggesting further-reaching implications on the use of AI to infer voter behavior and potentially influence elections. […]

The Offices of Inspectors General (OIG) for the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) are planning to begin a joint audit to determine what actions taken by the DoD and VA in acquiring and implementing a common, commercial electronic health record system. […]

A senior official speaking Feb. 26 at the RSA Conference clarified recent steps by the State Department to publicly attribute and condemn acts of cyber aggression on the part of Russia, calling the actions of the Department part of a deliberate attempt to establish a framework for appropriate nation-state behavior in cyberspace. […]

Federal officials from the Defense Department (DoD), Justice Department (DoJ), and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on Feb. 25 totaled up the sobering costs of intellectual property theft from U.S. interests in recent years, and pointed to strategies their agencies are pursuing to put a dent into that total going forward. […]

State and local election officials said at the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Feb. 24 that Federal election assistance funding has been vital to their efforts to shore up election infrastructure security over the past few years. […]

Three members of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) on Feb. 25 hinted at several themes of the group’s upcoming recommendations for U.S. cybersecurity doctrine and policy that is due for public release on March 11. Central to the report’s conclusions will be a rethinking of cyber deterrence strategies, and greater coordination between the Federal government’s several agencies that focus on cyber defense, they indicated. […]

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) released a report outlining best practices in building the cybersecurity workforce through regional partnerships. […]

A group of public sector cybersecurity leaders, speaking on a panel Feb. 24 at the RSA Public Sector Day event, discussed the challenge of reconciling competing priorities when assessing both the business value and mission value of cybersecurity investments. […]

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs pledged today that there is no issue drawing more focus and attention at the Federal government level than election security leading up to the 2020 elections later this year. […]

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee investigated the cybersecurity of contractors working with the United States Transportation Command during a hearing Tuesday. […]

The National Governors Association (NGA) urged Congress to take action on key pieces of legislation that will help harden state and local government’s (SLGs) cybersecurity defenses. […]

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) will hold its next Technological Advisory Council (TAC) meeting on March 24 at the FCC headquarters. […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its 2019 Privacy and Data Security Update that highlighted “a record year for enforcement actions aimed at protecting consumer privacy and data security.” […]

While senators at a Feb. 25 Appropriations Committee hearing agreed with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf about the agency’s cybersecurity mission priority, election security cuts in the President’s Budget proposal raised questions from committee members. […]

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Identification and Notification Act of 2020 (H.R. 5680) could slightly lower the deficit, but not by a significant amount. The bill, introduced by Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I. on Jan. 27, would authorize the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue administrative subpoenas in rare […]

There is a concerning lack of cyber confidence and organizational maturity across all levels of government, according to a survey released today by SolarWinds. The report, which surveyed IT operations and security decisionmakers from Federal, state, and local governments, found that the biggest IT pain points for the public sector are IT complexity, insider threats, and controlling user network access. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) officially adopted the Defense Innovation Board’s (DIB) ethical artificial intelligence (AI) principles Feb. 24. […]

The security clearance backlog is “decreasing, but still problematic,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said at an event held today with industry leaders at George Mason University in Fairfax. […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is ripe to revolutionize the workforce and the process of human-machine teaming, but funding, organizational application, and experimentation must accelerate in order for it to become a reality, posited Steve Harris, senior vice president and general manager of Dell Technologies Federal. […]

Sean Plankey, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity, Energy, Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) at the Department of Energy (DoE), today outlined solutions to cybersecurity skills gaps in the industrial controls sector as security for that sector continues to change from older “manual-mode” methods to more modern technologies. […]

Since 2014, the beginning of CIO Joseph Klimavicz’s tenure, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has achieved $600 million in IT cost avoidance, reduced cyber risk by 70 percent, and streamlined its 23 email systems into one cloud-based solution. […]

In a letter to ShiftState Security Chief Security Officer Andre McGregor, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., challenged the results of an audit ShiftState was supposed to have conducted of the Voatz voting app. […]

Sixty-four Federal agencies have experimented with artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) techniques, a new report, submitted to the Administrative Conference of the United States, shows. […]

Oki Mek, senior adviser to the CIO at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), on Feb. 20 discussed the agency’s current effort to draft a cloud strategy, and the importance of going forward with a unified strategy that guides the entire organization. […]

Sean Connelly, Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) program manager at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said this week his office expects to issue finalized documents sometime this spring for version 3.0 of the TIC initiative. The agency issued draft guidance documents for TIC 3.0 late last year. […]

RSA said today that Verizon will no longer participate in this year’s RSA security conference as a Gold Sponsor, presumably due to concerns regarding the coronavirus. […]

The House of Representatives is looking to strengthen public safety network resiliency with two new pieces of legislation. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released the Special Publication 800-171, Revision 2: Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in Non-Federal Systems and Organizations today. […]

A senior General Services Administration (GSA) official said today the agency is supportive of the primary aims of a new report recommending steps to modernize the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), which provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. […]

The Federal defense agency responsible for secure communications of national leaders and military operations said Social Security numbers and other personal information may have been compromised in a 2019 data breach. […]