Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy

Nearly 20 years after the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) first identified the need to modernize its scheduling system, VA is on track to adopt a permanent scheduling solution as part of its electronic health record (EHR) modernization effort, according to a report from VA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) today. […]

Cyber Security Brainstorm

Guy Cavallo, deputy CIO at the Small Business Administration (SBA), said today that his agency has made significant strides toward IT modernization by employing cloud services, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools provided by SBA’s cloud vendors to improve network security. […]

GSA General Services Administration

After seeing the Alliant 2 Small Business governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC) awards rescinded due to a court challenge, the General Services Administration (GSA) released a list of proposed changes to the contract on August 19, expanding the number of awards. […]

NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will be releasing the second volume of an engineering-based guidance that aims at assisting organizations with Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) on September 5, 2019. […]

John Ratcliffe

Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, confirmed to MeriTalk that he will reintroduce the Advancing Cybersecurity Continuing Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Act. His office said to expect the bill “within the next month or so.” […]

FDA website

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is creating a pilot program to test new data standards for the data collected in non-clinical studies funded by the agency, FDA announced in an upcoming Federal Register post. […]

texas

The Commonwealth of Texas has earned the dubious honor of being the latest state or local government hit by a successful ransomware attack. The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) confirmed on Aug. 16 that at least 23 local government entities were hit by a “coordinated” ransomware attack. DIR said it will lead the cybersecurity response to the attack. […]

U.S. Navy Undersecretary Thomas Modly announced last week that the Navy will restructure the service branch’s CIO position, including having the CIO concurrently serve as a special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy. […]

Principle Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for intelligence Kari Bingen, has sad that the security clearance backlog has been cut in half after a high point of 725,000 in April 2018. […]

The Federal government saw a 12 percent reduction in cybersecurity incidents in fiscal year 2018, and no “major” cybersecurity incidents for the year, according to the Office of Management and Budget’s annual report on the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA). […]

cloud computing concept -min

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) issued an Aug. 15 provisional authorization that would enable Defense Department (DoD) components and mission partners to streamline cloud authorizations. […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) launched the Department of Defense (DoD) Secure Access File Exchange (SAFE) on Aug. 15, which will provide users with an enterprise-wide ability to safely transfer files in the DoD. […]

Cybersecurity cyber

While “large impactful [cyber] incidents” are on the rise, there are fewer “high-profile public disclosures,” according to a FireEye’s year’s M-Trends 2019 Report, which is based on FireEye Mandiant’s investigations of the most interesting and impactful cyberattacks of 2018. […]

The Army is establishing new cyber and electronic warfare units for multi-domain operations, but the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the branch has not fully assessed the risk of activating some of its units at an accelerated pace and is facing staffing, equipping, and training challenges. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hopes to test Accelerate – the first block-chain based program in the Federal government to get an authority-to-operate – in the coming fall and rollout the portal fully in the beginning of 2020. […]

The Department of Energy (DoE) upgraded its Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model (C2M2) to help measure how organizations effectively protect themselves from cyber threats. […]

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Pentagon Military Defense DoD

TechNet President and CEO Linda Moore wrote the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on Aug. 12 to raise concerns with the current draft of the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). […]

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