The House on Wednesday approved by voice vote HR 6032, the SMART IoT Act, which would direct the Department of Commerce to study and report to Congress within one year on the U.S. Internet-connected device industry, including on voluntary and mandatory standards that are being developed around the world for the IoT sector, which Federal agencies have jurisdiction over the sector, and any regulations or standards those agencies have put in place that impact the IoT sector. […]
When it comes to eliminating botnets, Jeanette Manfra, assistant director for Cybersecurity for the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, stressed the importance of thinking differently and considering new solutions at the unveiling the 2018 International Anti-Botnet Guide today. […]
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is thanking the Senate Rules Committee for its work to improve the Senate’s cybersecurity posture by moving to begin encrypting data stored on Senate computers. […]
When it comes to customer experience in the Federal government, customers can be like your children: you love them and want to help them succeed, but you don’t get to pick them, and you have to work toward their high expectations. That was the message from Anahita Reilly, chief customer officer at the General Services Administration (GSA), during a speech today at Deloitte’s Creating a Future Forward event. […]
Dell said on Nov. 28 that it “detected and disrupted” unauthorized activity on its network on Nov. 9 that aimed to steal Dell.com customer information including names, email addresses, and hashed passwords, but not credit card or other sensitive data. Dell said “it is possible” that some data was stolen, but that “our investigations found no conclusive evidence that any was extracted.” Dell said its security measures in place–including hashing of customer passwords and a mandatory Dell.com password reset–are in place to limit the impact of any potential data disclosure. The company also said it has hired an digital forensics firm to conduct an independent investigate, and also has “engage law enforcement.” […]
The Department of Health and Human Services on Nov. 28 issued a draft strategy that the agency said is “designed to help reduce administrative and regulatory burdens on clinicians” stemming from use of health information technologies including electronic health records. […]
Thomas Michelli, acting deputy CIO for cybersecurity at the Defense Department, said late Tuesday that one idea being discussed at the Pentagon to improve supply chain security involves providing a “government furnished cloud” for contractors to use. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs admitted this month that its 10-year, $10 billion-plus project to create an interoperable electronic health record system incurred a $350 million cost overrun right out of the gate–a potential red flag in the latest effort to develop an integrated records system that also works with the Department of Defense’s system. […]
The Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program is looking to give agencies a cyber hygiene score, redesign its dashboard, and tie the program together with other cybersecurity efforts, said Kevin Cox, CDM program manager at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). […]
Elena Hernandez has left her post as press secretary for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce for the same position at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. […]
During Tuesday’s Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation subcommittee hearing, Federal Trade Commissioners were unanimous in their call for Congress to explore Federal data privacy legislation. […]
How do you get 1,000 folks out of bed in Las Vegas before 7:00 a.m.? […]
The Small Business Administration (SBA) is working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to run a pilot program to fulfill Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) requirements in the cloud with an innovative approach to meet CDM’s goals. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs said today it is targeting Dec. 1, 2019–a full year from now–to complete a technical fix to address problems that have plagued the agency’s ability to correctly calculate monthly housing allowance payments under the 2017 Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, also known as the “Forever GI Bill.” […]
In a letter to Walter Copan, undersecretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., called on NIST to create a framework for the development and use of facial recognition technologies. […]
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos highlighted the success of the Department of Education’s mobile applications during a speech on Tuesday, pointing to their convenience and ability to reach citizens in an effective manner. […]
The Department of Justice said today it indicted eight people from Russia and Kazakhstan allegedly involved in two cybercriminal rings engaged in digital advertising fraud. […]
More than 200 Google engineering, research, and project management employees have signed a petition calling on the company to cancel its Dragonfly project, which the employees said aims to create a “censored search engine for the Chinese market that enables state surveillance.” […]
The National Defense Strategy Commission released recommendations this week for the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy, including an urgent need to improve cyber defenses. […]
The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it fined ride-sharing provider Uber 385,000 pounds (U.S. $490,000) for failing to take adequate steps to protect the personal data of its customers during a cyberattack suffered by the company in 2016. […]
General Services Administration officials said today they expect their plan to consolidate 24 multiple award schedules into a single schedule for products and services to take about two years to complete, and that the effort is expected to yield workforce cost savings and efficiencies for both GSA and private sector partners that sell to the Federal government. […]
In an Inspector General (IG) report released Nov. 20, the Department of the Interior got taken to task for allowing an employee to visit 9,000 pornographic websites in under seven months. This is the IG second report chastising the department for an employee viewing porn on agency time and technology. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) released a request for information detailing part of the Federal Acquisition Service’s (FAS’) new CIO Modernization and Enterprise Transformation contract–named COMET for short–and highlighted the guiding principles of cloud-native solutions, SecDevOps, and data management. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) announced on Tuesday that the agency is condensing its 24 multiple award schedules, including IT Schedule 70, into a single schedule for products and services, in a move that it says will simplify acquisitions for Federal agencies. […]
A draft of the new Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) policy released Monday reorients the focus of DCOI toward optimization–rather than data center consolidations and closures–and revises metrics for the program. […]
In advance of a scheduled meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit this week, a new update from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released on November 20 details China’s continued policies of stealing information from U.S. companies through cyberattacks. […]
The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), meeting last week to consider data protection issues broadly, discussed the importance of protecting digital information and privacy in an era of increasing global terrorism and cybercrime. […]
The Defense Information Services Agency (DISA) is set to release new contracts for classified and unclassified mobility services to accommodate the growth in the area, said Jacob Marcellus, mobility program portfolio manager, during DISA’s 2018 Forecast to Industry event. “We actually have two impending acquisitions, MES-U [Mobility Enterprise Services Unclassified], which will cover all unclassified […]
The House has scheduled consideration later this week of several pieces of legislation impacting Federal IT issues including Federal CIO authorities and agency website functionality and performance. […]
The U.S. Postal Services (USPS) has fixed a security flaw within its Informed Delivery service that was allowing criminals to perpetrate a multitude of identity theft and credit card fraud schemes. […]