Two Federal Trade Commissioners – one a Republican and the other a Democrat – agreed on Oct. 28 that the agency has the tricky task of balancing both consumer data privacy and business interests, and must find that balance even as the fast pace of technological advancement makes the value of prescriptive regulation uncertain.  […]

A bill reintroduced in the Senate Oct. 24 aims to increase the reach of emergency alert communications on national and state levels by preventing some alert opt-outs on mobile phones, requiring that alerts issued by the White House or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) be run repeatedly by television and radio stations, and exploring how to create a system to offer emergency alerts on audio and video online streaming services. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) is looking to industry for advice on how the agency can share and spread human centered design (HCD) practices across the Federal government, as noted in a request for information released today. […]

In a Friday letter to President Trump’s acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., demanded answers about recent departures from the administration of key Federal cybersecurity officials. […]

The Social Security Administration did not remediate multiple known vulnerabilities for over one year, according to a summary of a report from SSA’s inspector general, released October 24. […]

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, announced updated Republican subcommittee assignments on Oct. 25. Among the changes, Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., will join the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation Subcommittee. […]

The Department of Defense has awarded its 10-year, $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) contract for general purpose cloud computing to Microsoft, setting the stage for the department’s cloud strategy to take effect. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is tackling managed service provider (MSPs) cybersecurity by developing a customizable reference model that MSPs can adapt to fit their program needs. […]

The FBI released new election security resources as part of its Protected Voices initiative on Oct. 23. […]

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) announced Oct. 25 that it will provide priority telecom services (PTS) to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Emergency Communications Division. […]

A spotty risk management strategy, along with poor security control assessment procedures, are undermining the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)’s ability to identify and detect network security threats, according to an FDIC Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report released on Oct. 23. […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offered its comments on the draft version of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) Privacy Framework, including praise and suggestions for several additions to the policy. […]

A panel of Federal agency officials who are knee-deep in implementing machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies explained critical steps to getting started with the technologies, and dealing with data-bias issues, at an event organized by ATARC on Oct. 24. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), along with the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), on Oct. 24 launched their Accelerate R2 Network Challenge. […]

The Advancing Cybersecurity Diagnostics and Mitigation Act, H.R. 4237, was unanimously approved by the House Homeland Security Committee on Oct. 23. […]

Senator Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., called on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’) policies and handling of personally identifiable information following recent security incidents. […]

Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Robin Kelly, D-Ill., today announced a new artificial intelligence (AI) initiative with the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). The initiative will create a bipartisan national artificial intelligence (AI) strategy. The strategy is intended to guide Congress and the executive branch on how to best capitalize on AI. […]

Federal agency CISOs obviously have a lot to do – like securing networks, for one – but they’re also busy “selling” cybersecurity within their agencies to leadership across the organization, a panel of Federal security chiefs explained Oct. 22 at the ACT-IAC Imagine Nation 2019 conference. […]

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are looking to improve program administration with the usage of data analytics, automated technologies, and other emerging technologies, according to a request for information released on October 21. The RFI is open until November 20. […]

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on Oct. 23 hailed a report from Google that the company’s Sycamore quantum computer has achieved “an experimental realization of quantum supremacy” for a specific computational task over the abilities of classical supercomputers, and thus “heralding a much-anticipated computing paradigm.” […]

Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., on Oct. 22 reintroduced legislation in the Senate and House aimed at creating a voluntary system to certify cybersecurity protections for internet of things (IoT) devices. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) mitigated security threats and met security standards in most domains of mobile device management, according to a report from VA’s inspector general released October 22. […]

Reps. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., and Cathy McMorris, R-Wash., introduced the US SAFE WEB Extension Act on Oct. 22, which would enable the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect Americans from fraud, spam, and deception online. […]

The FITARA (Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) Scorecard issued every six months by the House Oversight and Reform Committee could benefit from updates to some of its Federal agency IT scoring categories, several panelists said Oct. 22 at the ACT-IAC Imagine Nation 2019 conference. […]

Karen Dunn Kelley, principal deputy secretary at the Department of Commerce, said Oct. 22 she expects the final version of the year-one action plan accompanying the Trump administration’s Federal Data Strategy to be released next month.   […]

Margaret Weichert, deputy director of Management at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said Oct. 22 that the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) issued by the White House in 2018 aims to allow the Federal government to become more agile in improving citizen service, and in doing so to operate closer to the private-sector mode. […]

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on securing elections, witnesses from law enforcement agencies were asked a litany of questions related to the security of U.S. elections for 2020, including what kind of new measures were being taken during this cycle. […]

Erica Thomas, a robotic process automation (RPA) Program Manager at the Department of Defense (DoD), said Oct. 21 that efforts to deploy RPA technologies in financial accounting systems are providing a boost in the morale of agency employees who are being freed from performing repetitive tasks. […]

Officials from the Departments of Defense (DoD), Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are bootstrapping an effort to further clarify and detail roles and career paths of the Federal cybersecurity workforce, the officials said Oct. 21 at the ACT-IAC Imagine Nation 2019 conference. […]

Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google and widely acknowledged as one of the “fathers” of the Internet for co-designing the TCP/IP protocols, said today he believes that technical issues preventing creation of “inter-clouds” between cloud networks are solvable. […]