With a new mandate to stop sending Social Security Numbers (SSNs) through the mail unless absolutely necessary, the Social Security Administration (SSA) issued a request for information (RFI) for a solution to replace them with a tokenization solution. Vendors have until February 1 to submit their responses. […]
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Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., has been appointed to the House Oversight and Reform Committee (ORC), formerly known as the Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR). Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced the news last night. […]
Ross Nodurft joined Venable as its senior director of cybersecurity services this month. […]
The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) released its annual list of Federal advocacy priorities today which prominently feature cybersecurity regulations and state CIO/CISO roles in Federal government efforts. […]
The National Intelligence Strategy, released yesterday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), names cyber threat intelligence as one of seven mission objectives for the intelligence community, and addresses threats and opportunities from emerging technologies. […]
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., introduced a bill that aims to prevent any future Federal government shutdown caused by lapsed appropriations by creating a mechanism to automatically renew government funding at the prior-year level with adjustments for inflation, the senator said. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an emergency order on Tuesday afternoon in an effort to mitigate Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure tampering. DHS and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been tracking incidents of tampering where multiple executive branch agency domains were impacted. […]
Federal IT oversight will be the domain of the Subcommittee on Government Operations in the House Committee Oversight and Reform, and there will be no IT Subcommittee this session of Congress, said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, during an interview on Tuesday’s episode of Government Matters TV. […]
Republican and Democratic Senate leaders announced an agreement late today under which the Senate will vote Thursday on two pieces of legislation that would clear the way to fully fund government operations and at least temporarily end the partial Federal government shutdown, which entered its 31st day today. Whether either of those pieces of legislation […]
According to the Nexusguard Q3 2018 Threat Report, 65.5 percent of distributed denial-of-service attacks were launched against communications service providers (CSPs) in the third quarter of 2018. […]
The partial government shutdown could weaken the twin strengths of stability and mission that the government has in recruiting talent for the Federal workforce, said Jonathan Alboum, public sector CTO for Veritas and former CIO at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), during an interview with Government Matters TV on Sunday. […]
The Aspen Institute would like a hand in training and developing some of the country’s best cyber and technology experts through a new fellowship program that focuses on tech policymaking. […]
The Department of Homeland Security will extend deadlines for requests for proposals (RFPs), requests for quotations (RFQs) and requests for information (RFIs) to account for reduced staffing during the department’s lapse in appropriations, according to a FedBizOpps notice posted on January 17. […]
Federal agencies cannot develop an effective strategy to migrate workloads to the cloud without having a solid data strategy in place, according to a leading cloud expert at Booz Allen Hamilton. […]
The “End The Shutdown And Secure The Border Act,” touted by President Trump as a “commonsense compromise” funding bill to end the partial federal government shutdown and set to be introduced in the Senate, includes $25 million in FY 2019 funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) – mirroring the funding level set in H.R. 648, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, set to be considered in the House this week. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is requesting information for market research as it relates to testing software; infrastructure, environments, and operations of the Enterprise Testing Service (ETS) and ETS cloud; and continuous quality process management support. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) is seeking Rapid Innovation Fund (RIF) applications for fiscal year 2019, according to a broad agency announcement released Friday. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs awarded a $9.9 million contract to establish and manage a new cloud platform for the agency’s mobile applications to Booz Allen Hamilton. […]
On Friday, the Senate blocked a bill that would open the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through Feb. 8. […]
A House-Senate conference committee has pegged FY 2019 funding for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) at just $25 million, according to text of legislation made public by the House Rules Committee and set to be considered by the committee, and possibly by the House, next week. […]
In a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) blog post, released Thursday, the HHS Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) announced that they have completed a 14-week pilot program that sought to “improve clinical trials, experimental therapies, and data-driven solutions” for challenges stemming from cancer, Lyme disease, and other tick-borne diseases using Federal data and artificial intelligence (AI). […]
Reps. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md.; Jim Himes, D-Conn.; Will Hurd, R-Texas; and Mike Conaway, R-Texas, have introduced legislation to create an Office of Critical Technologies & Security at the White House to coordinate action across Federal agencies and develop a “whole of government” strategy to combat theft of U.S. technologies by state actors including China, and to reduce risks to “critical supply chains.” This bill is a companion bill to one that was introduced in the Senate on Jan. 4 by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla. […]
Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Kennedy, R-La., reintroduced the Social Media Privacy and Consumer Rights Act on Thursday, which would strengthen privacy notices and breach disclosure requirements for online platforms. […]
The military has long had the goal of giving troops on the ground a clear operational picture. That can include the location of enemy troops, their own troops, the location of buildings or fortifications, the movement of ground vehicles or aircraft, and a lot of other variables. It’s what the Army, for instance, has been working toward with programs to develop an integrated tactical network. […]
The Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center on Wednesday released a report identifying the potential threats that China and Russia’s presence in space has on civil and military space services. […]
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein released a report on Thursday that highlights the impact of data breaches on the state in 2018, and paired the report with a bipartisan bill to strengthen breach notifications to include ransomware attacks. […]
Congress and the White House seemed no closer today to reaching an agreement to end the partial Federal government shutdown, as the public interactions between the two mainly featured an apparently tit-for-tat exchange between President Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., over the latter’s ability to use U.S. military transportation for an overseas trip. […]
Members of the House and Senate are giving the bipartisan Securing Energy Infrastructure Act another go in the current Congress, after passing the bill in the Senate in December 2018 but failing to get the bill through the House before the 115th Congress ended. […]
A group of House Democrats said today they plan to introduce a bill on Friday that would require the Treasury Department to offer zero-interest loans of up to $6,000 to Federal government employees that have not been getting paid as a result of the partial Federal government shutdown. […]
Venable LLP has hired Nick Choate as a policy advisor in its Legislative and Government Affairs Practice in Washington, with a focus on cybersecurity, telecom and technology public policy. He was deputy legislative director for former Sen. Claire McCaskill, D.-Mo. […]