The Senate on Thursday voted to approve three nominations to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). […]

Three senators asked President Trump in an Oct. 11 letter to provide information on whether the U.S. government operates any equipment using motherboards supplied by Super Micro Computer, Inc., which was the subject of a recent article by Bloomberg Businessweek reporting that Super Micro equipment had chips secretly implanted in the equipment that enabled backdoor data transmissions to China. Super Micro has strongly denied the claims of that report. Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., also asked what steps the U.S. has taken to ensure that Federal government equipment does not contain illicit chips, and whether the White House knows other instances of the Chinese government infiltrating technology made for end users in the U.S. They asked for a reply by Nov. 2. […]

With new guidance released Thursday offering more direct hire authority to agencies, including in cybersecurity and IT areas, the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) is aiming to fill positions that are critical to meeting the missions of agencies, said OPM Deputy Director Michael Rigas during a Thursday interview with Government Matters. […]

Top Federal officials are pointing to new research from MeriTalk and the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) as evidence that the Trump administration’s Federal government IT modernization efforts are making solid progress. […]

Kelly Olson, the new acting director of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS) organization, spoke Thursday about ongoing progress with the Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative that’s being run out of TTS, providing a glimpse into the maturation and coming expansion of the program. […]

The recent Department of Homeland Security alert describing ongoing cyberattacks on global managed service providers highlights the need for the U.S. government to take a lead role in protecting internet infrastructure, according to some industry cybersecurity experts. […]

A new memo from the Office of Personnel Management offers new hiring authorities to agencies in key STEM-field areas, including cybersecurity related jobs. […]

Senators Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked the chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer in an Oct. 9 letter whether the company has ever found evidence of tampering of components or firmware that targeted the company’s products, among other questions stemming from a Bloomberg Businessweek article reporting that chips made by a Chinese firm and allegedly used by numerous U.S. companies and government agencies were engineered to enable backdoor data transmissions to China.  […]

Mike Duffy, acting deputy director for the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Network Resilience Division, said today that many Federal agencies are expecting to have all of their .gov domains protected from email spoofing campaigns, ahead of an October 16 deadline to do so. […]

As “agile” tech development methodologies gain support at the Pentagon, a new guide from the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), titled “Detecting Agile BS,” aims to arm Federal IT executives with the power to read in between the buzzwords and weed out the imposters. […]

Blockchain technology, along with cryptocurrencies based on that technology, received decidedly mixed views at a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Thursday where witnesses debated the usefulness of blockchain to institutions like banks and government agencies, and shared divergent views on whether the technology has promising potential use cases. […]

Three Senate Democrats asked Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Joseph Simons in an Oct. 10 letter to open an investigation into Google’s disclosure earlier this week that it discovered and patched in March a vulnerability in its Google+ social media platform that may have exposed profile data on up to 500,000 accounts, but did not inform users of the vulnerability in a timely way. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced yesterday that Yanjun Xu, a Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) operative, was extradited to the United States Tuesday on charges of conspiring and attempting to commit economic espionage and steal trade secrets from U.S. aviation and aerospace companies–including GE Aviation. […]

The military’s reliance on the Global Positioning System is so great that an obvious question arises on a regular basis: What if it isn’t available? […]

Federal customer experience professionals offered advice this week to agencies looking to improve their customer experience and highlighted resources that their agencies have utilized to improve customer service. […]

The Federal government is seeing progress in seven out of 10 key cybersecurity metrics that are being tracked quarterly as part of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today. […]

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that DHS is still preparing to go public with a new “resilience agenda” […]

Agriculture Department CIO Gary Washington laid out his agency’s IT modernization journey today, beginning with USDA’s work as the lighthouse agency for the Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative, and continuing with the agency’s selection as one of the first three to receive an award under the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF). […]

McAfee and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) today released a new report about modernizing Social Security Numbers (SSN) in light of growing privacy and security concerns over using SSNs as a de facto personal identifier. The […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense announced a joint agreement between Defense Secretary James Mattis and VA Secretary Robert Wilkie to work together on the new electronic health records (EHR) systems in both departments. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General said in an unclassified summary report dated Sept. 28 that it has given the agency’s Science and Technology Directorate a total of nine recommendations that it believes would strengthen S&T’s management of insider threat risks […]

The chairmen of the House Intelligence and Oversight and Government Reform committees have asked for classified briefings from top U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies on a recent Bloomberg Businessweek report that Chinese hackers infiltrated numerous U.S. companies and government agencies through a supply-chain hardware hack involving implantation in network equipment of a chip that can route data back to China. […]

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee heard testimony today detailing the workings of data privacy laws in Europe and California–specifically the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)–amid a growing groundswell for Congress to work on a national data privacy law for the U.S. […]

A Defense Department spokesperson responded late Tuesday to a report from the Government Accountability Office that DoD faces challenges in protecting weapons systems from cyber attacks by saying the agency is “continuously strengthening” its defense cybersecurity posture. […]

Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program Manager Kevin Cox said today that all 23 CFO Act agencies covered under CDM are now connected and feeding data to the Federal government-wide cybersecurity threat dashboard. […]

Regardless of whether Chinese hackers really did infiltrate more than two dozen U.S. companies and multiple government agencies through a supply-chain hardware hack, the bombshell report by Bloomberg Businessweek throws light on an ongoing problem facing the Department of Defense, among others. […]

The Government Accountability Office warned in a report issued today that the Defense Department “faces mounting challenges in protecting its weapons systems from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats,” and, because of its “late start” in prioritizing weapons systems cybersecurity, needs to “sustain its momentum” in developing and implementing key weapon systems security initiatives. […]

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he is eyeing the post-midterm election “lame duck” period for further movement through Congress of his 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA) bill that would empower Federal agency CTOs and CIOs to modernize and improve their websites and citizen services. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced today that Romeo Vasile Chita, a Romanian national, was returned to the United States last Friday to face Federal charges of racketeering, wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to launder money, and conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit services charges. […]

A new survey from One Identity, a maker of identity and access management (IAM) solutions, finds that 77 percent of IT security professionals polled in the United states, Europe, and elsewhere said it would be “easy” for them to steal sensitive information from their companies if they were to leave those organizations. […]