In an effort to halt the spread of election disinformation online, United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) is telling Russian operatives that American operatives have identified who they are and are tracking their efforts. The campaign is the first known overseas cyber operation to protect American elections, according to the New York Times which first reported the story. […]
Yahoo, which is now owned by Verizon, has agreed to pay $50 million in damages, plus about $35 million in legal fees, under a proposed civil settlement covering data breaches in 2013 and 2014 that impacted three billion Yahoo accounts, according to numerous press reports. […]
The intelligence community’s (IC) stock in trade has always been knowing what nobody else knows. Now it’s looking to tap into new technology to expand its ability to forecast geopolitical events in several ways, including finding out what everybody knows. […]
A Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee staffer suggested Tuesday that the many and sometimes disparate elements of industry and academia that make up what could be considered the artificial intelligence (AI) sector should take action to present a more united front to Congress if they hope to convince legislators to create laws that would benefit the sector. […]
Leaders at defense and intelligence agencies have a unique challenge–how to build a cloud environment that is secure, reliable, and delivers a wide variety of services. […]
The upcoming Federal Data Strategy, currently in development and open to comment, aims to increase transparency and drive better service for citizens, said Jay Huie, a White House leadership development fellow, who described himself as an “ombudsperson” for the Federal Data Fellows developing the strategy. […]
Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary Christopher Krebs said today that the biggest change in election security between the 2016 elections and today is the elimination of communication barriers between state and local authorities and the Federal government. […]
Federal cyber pros at Palo Alto Networks’ Federal Ignite conference weighed in today on the cost of cybersecurity and its return on investment, suggesting that government spend may not be properly configured to the risks, threats, and real assets that need to be protected. […]
Big data analytics are helping Federal agencies enable their users to do more to serve citizens, but agencies have yet to harness the vast amount of data in the Federal space, said IT leaders during a panel at the ATARC Data & Analytics Summit on Tuesday. […]
The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), in partnership with Deloitte, today released its new cybersecurity study which argues CISOs need to launch three “bold initiatives” to ward off advanced cyber threats. […]
Super Micro Computer told customers in an Oct. 18 letter that the gist of a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article–reporting the alleged secret implantation of malicious computer chips in motherboards made by the company and used by numerous U.S. companies and government agencies–is “wrong,” and that “from everything we know and have seen, no malicious hardware chip has been implanted during the manufacturing of our motherboards.” […]
The General Services Administration’s Office of Inspector General said in a report issued Oct. 19 that it wants GSA’s IT Office (GSA IT) to provide a revised corrective action plan to improve the agency’s policies for responding to breaches of personally identifiable information (PII). […]
The Army released a sources sought notice for the service’s Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE), requesting information from companies that could “consolidate the integration and development of the PCTE platform.” […]
The U.S. Army on October 18 issued contract awards to 198 companies for its potential 10-year, $37.4 billion Responsive Strategic Sourcing for Services (RS3) contract, which covers a wide range of government programs with Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) mission requirements. […]
The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) today released its policy and legislative wish list for data privacy, joining a recent wave of tech trade groups including the Internet Association and BSA issuing similarly-themed statements as lawmakers filed data privacy bills this year. […]
The Department of Health and Human Service’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported a data breach of its HealthCare.gov site, with the attacker accessing the files of about 75,000 people, the agency said in a statement released Friday. […]
Technology initiatives helped improve response rates for citizens and productivity for Census Bureau employees during the agency’s 2018 End-to-End Census Test, the Bureau reported during its quarterly program management review. […]
Department of Energy (DoE) CIO Max Everett said the agency’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) project is helping to align the activities of DoE’s wide range of labs and offices, and that the TMF process has helped DoE learn to prioritize all of its future IT projects around cost efficiency and business case. […]
The role of the chief financial officer is evolving to include a greater emphasis on technology and more collaboration with CIOs and IT departments at Federal agencies, said Federal CFOs and CIOs during a webinar hosted by FedInsider. […]
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, alongside the Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Homeland Security, released a joint statement today that expresses their concern over election interference and calls identification and prevention of interference a “top priority for the Federal government.” […]
The General Services Administration on Wednesday announced a new pilot program that aims to provide more transparency around its schedule contracts and potentially attract more vendors to participate in the Federal marketplace. […]
Five telecommunication industry groups–American Cable Association; CTIA – The Wireless Association; NCTA – The Internet & Television Association; USTelecom – The Broadband Association and the New England Cable & Telecommunications Association–filed suit against the state of Vermont on Thursday over the state’s net neutrality law. The law in question seeks to prevent companies that do not abide by the state’s net neutrality rules from receiving state contracts. […]
With critical infrastructure emerging as a major concern for the U.S. government, cybersecurity efforts must account for critical infrastructure’s interdependent and connected nature, and make sure to address the linkages between industries, said experts from the private and public sector at a Wednesday event hosted by the Atlantic Council. […]
Retired Adm. Mike Rogers, who stepped down earlier this year as head of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, has joined the board of advisors of Team8, an Israel-based cybersecurity think tank and company-creation platform. […]
The U.S. Navy released its final request for proposals for the Service, Management, Integration and Transport portion of the service’s Next Generation Recompete (NGEN-R) contract on Thursday, building on the current $3.5 billion Next Generation Enterprise Networks (NGEN) contract. […]
As fake news threatens to eat the world, a number of government, academic, and private organizations have launched a range of projects to combat its spread, including artificial intelligence systems that can flag fake news by calling out its content. […]
On Tuesday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced an investigation into how wireless services providers responded to Hurricane Michael, which devastated the Florida Panhandle and surrounding areas–along with service provider infrastructure–last week. […]
Current and retired Defense Department IT officials today discussed cost and opportunity implications of further cloud adoption by the military and potential payoffs including acceleration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. […]
Yesterday two academics proposed creating an international organization modeled after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), that would “provide assistance and relief to vulnerable citizens and enterprises affected by serious cyberattacks.” […]
Data from the Federal government’s IT Dashboard website appear to indicate that Federal CFO Act agencies have made some progress but are still more than 1,000 data centers short of their intended closure goals for 2020 under the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI). […]