Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, both the public and private sector are turning to telework to help stem the spread of the virus. This reliance on telework has increased investment in cloud computing services, which will cause the cloud market to grow 18.4 percent in 2021, according to a Nov. 17 report from Gartner. […]

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., urged the White House to strengthen cybersecurity defenses for the U.S. healthcare system amid concerns of cyberattacks intended to steal COVID-19 treatment and vaccine research. […]

House Democratic committee leaders didn’t get the briefing they wanted on Monday from General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Emily Murphy on why she has not yet made a judgement that Joe Biden is the apparent winner of the 2020 presidential election, so they pressed for a briefing session on Tuesday. […]

President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris said today they plan to nominate Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of Homeland Security, and Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). […]

The U.S. Army has appointed Raj Iyer as its new CIO, according to a LinkedIn post from Iyer. […]

Federal agencies are leveraging past work on authorizations to operate (ATO) to bring in more cloud tools covered by the Federal Risk Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Brian Conrad, FedRAMP Cybersecurity Program Manager. […]

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) guidance on Federal workforce rotational cybersecurity assignments envisions 120-day rotation assignments to other agencies, and lists  several programs that rotations may run through, according to a Nov. 18 memo to agency heads from Michael Rigas, Acting Director of OPM. […]

The Federal Risk Assessment and Management Program (FedRAMP) is poised to take a major step forward as the House and Senate take up of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2021 – a high priority post election. This must-pass legislation authorizes appropriations and establishes policies for the Defense Department. […]

GDIT and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) are building a native on-demand VMware environment to provide mission partners the power to accelerate their cloud migrations without conversion.  […]

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) confirmed late Friday that it awarded the Intelligence Community (IC) Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) Cloud Service Provider (CSP) contract to multiple vendors. […]

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation signed off on three broadband bills during a Nov. 18 business meeting.   […]

President-Elect Joe Biden has named Cathy Russell Director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, and Louisa Terrell Director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. […]

The Federal Communications Commission said Nov. 19 that it plans to consider a report and order at its Dec. 10 open meeting that would require some telecommunications service providers to remove and replace equipment in their networks that pose “unacceptable risks” to U.S. national security. […]

The Defense Department’s (DoD) U.S. Cyber Command is introducing the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture (JCWA) – a concept to integrate cyber warfighting systems—but needs to define JCWA interoperability goals for the systems, the Federal government’s watchdog agency said. […]

As Federal agencies continue to keep a majority of their workforces teleworking – and may continue to do so for the longer term as the coronavirus pandemic heats up again – keeping identity management practices a top priority has been a key ingredient in Federal agency cybersecurity efforts. […]

The chairs of the House Appropriations and Oversight and Reform committees are seeking a personal briefing by Monday, Nov. 23, from General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Emily Murphy on why GSA has yet to arrive at a judgement that Joe Biden is the apparent winner of the presidential election […]

The State Department released a fact sheet highlighting the United States’ support for digital transformation and cybersecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean. […]

More than three dozen Senate Democrats and independents have lined up to support new legislation that would block implementation of President Trump’s controversial executive order that would create a new “Schedule F” classification for Federal employees in policy-making positions and make it easier to hire and fire them. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency is proposing a new rule that would eliminate certain limitations on the collection of biometric data on non-citizens. […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated IT modernization and leveraged investments in cloud to keep agencies focused on the mission, which in turn is laying the groundwork for further modernization, said Maria Roat, Deputy Federal CIO, during a panel discussion today. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program is employing a multi-year view on helping Federal agencies to better protect their high-value assets (HVA), CDM Program Manager Kevin Cox indicated today. […]

The White House’s Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence released a new report this week with recommendations on how to leverage cloud computing resources for Federally funded AI research and development projects. […]

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) issued a request for information (RFI) seeking information on how a Federal contractor can support and sustain the existing GEOINT Data Analytics Cloud (GDAC). […]

As the continuing coronavirus pandemic puts a spotlight on the need for mission continuity, Federal agencies need to understand their customers’ journeys and smooth the path for them, Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat said today. […]

A new bill introduced in the House and Senate by two recognized congressional cybersecurity leaders would push Federal agencies to further adopt cybersecurity best practices by making it more difficult to obtain waivers under the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015. […]

MeriTalk recently connected with Dan Chenok, executive director at IBM’s Center for The Business of Government, to discuss the center’s recent “Innovation and Emerging Technologies in Government” research, authored by Alan Shark. This article takes a deeper look at the use cases outlined in the report, the five key mindsets that emerged from the interviews, and the connection found between innovation and technology. […]

Few things seem to unite Republicans and Democrats these days, but President Trump’s abrupt firing of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs seems to be one of the issues bucking that trend. President Trump fired Krebs via his Twitter account on Tuesday evening, prompting a mix of outrage and disapproval from members of Congress […]

The Senate on Nov. 17 approved the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act (H.R. 1668) by unanimous consent, sending the bill to the White House for President Trump’s signature. The House approved the bill in September. […]

Now that much of the Federal government workforce has eight months of pandemic-driven telework under its belt, government officials are examining how that experience has changed the future landscape of providing service to citizens, and how to incorporate lessons learned for what may be the longer haul of remote work. […]

Sean Connelly, who heads the TIC Program Office at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said today that his office is aiming to release a remote-user use case for the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 security initiative that will build on interim TIC guidance the agency issued earlier this year to help Federal agencies migrate quickly to large-scale telework. […]