In a letter on Aug. 7, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote to telecom giants AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon and urged them to store less sensitive customer data. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program will engage with small businesses in technological research and development Aug. 12-16 in the Southwest part of the National SBIR 2019 Road Tour. SBIR representatives will visit four cities – Tucson, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Boulder, Colo. – one per day in respective […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is putting together a single contract vehicle that will award multiple vendors to manage DHS’ 17 unclassified security operations centers (SOCs). […]

As agencies move to the cloud and secure their data there, meeting the new challenges with innovative solutions is a great opportunity – as long as agencies abide by existing security baselines, said Federal IT leaders during MeriTalk’s Cybersecurity Brainstorm. […]

John Felker, who last month was named assistant director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Integrated Operations Division (IOD), on Thursday discussed IOD’s plans to integrate operations of CISA’s three primary component organizations in order to produce better cyber threat data intelligence that will include inputs from Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) programs implemented by Federal agencies. […]

FBI Cyber Readiness, Outreach, and Intelligence Branch Deputy Assistant Director Tonya Ugoretz stressed at today’s MeriTalk Cyber Security Brainstorm that robust and resilient Federal cybersecurity requires collaboration across agencies and non-government partners. […]

The Federal Acquisition Regulation will ban agencies from procuring equipment from five Chinese companies, including Huawei and ZTE, starting August 13, according to an interim rule published August 7. […]

With the year quickly coming to a close, the FedRAMP Authorization Act will be one of Rep. Gerry Connolly’s “big priorities” for legislation, with a markup session expected when the House returns from its August recess, Connolly said during MeriTalk’s Cyber Security Brainstorm today. […]

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its estimate for S. 406, the Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program Act of 2019, and found that it would cost less than $500,000 annually to implement. […]

After only two years since the U.S. Air Force’s (USAF) launched Kessel Run, its Branch Chief Erynn Petersen touted the success they have seen in providing USAF with agile and resilient cybersecurity responsiveness at MeriTalk’s Cyber Security Brainstorm today. Petersen also stressed how Kessel Run can pose as a model for other cybersecurity teams. […]

The Senate last week confirmed Thomas McCaffery as Assistant Secretary of Defense for health affairs. […]

Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Tom Cotton, R-Texas, and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Aug. 7 questioning the tech giant’s ties to China. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning on Aug. 6 urging the public to “watch out for possible malicious cyber activity seeking to capitalize on” the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) recommends that agencies use IT Schedule 70 to procure solutions to implement Technology Business Management (TBM) practices – including advanced tools like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics process automation (RPA) – alongside IT financial management solutions. […]

Federal agency approaches to identity management don’t have a single approach across the government, but vary to significant degrees with agencies’ mission focus, said LaChelle LeVan, Acting Director for Federal Identity, Credential and Access Management (ICAM) Program Office at the General Services Administration (GSA). […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Aug. 6 that it has extradited Muhammad Fahd, who allegedly bribed AT&T workers to plant malware and illegally unlock cell phones. […]

Officials from the Defense Department (DoD) highlighted supply chain and workforce and culture issues as two significant problems the agency faces in maintaining strong cybersecurity, during a panel discussion at FCW’s Cybersecurity Summit. […]

FBI Director Chris Wray announced Aug. 5 that Robert Bone will be special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence and Cyber Division of the Los Angeles Field Office. […]

Embassy Nassau, the American embassy to the Bahamas, has IT issues that are largely a result of embassy understaffing, according to an August 5 report from the State Department’s Inspector General. […]

Senior Security Architect for the General Services Administration’s (GSA’s) Technology Transformation Services (TTS) and Centers of Excellence (CoE) Dan Jacobs wants agencies and industry alike to heed the lessons GSA has learned from experience and the Black Hat conference over the past 16 years when it comes to securely implementing cloud. […]

Federal officials spoke about the future role of the cloud in mobile device management (MDM) and security at the ATARC Federal Mobile Technology Summit today. […]

The Federal government is looking forward to implementing 5G wireless services as they become available, but building security into 5G services from the beginning will be key to a successful implementation, said officials from the Department of Defense (DoD), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the General Services Administration (GSA). […]

Distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks rose by 39 percent between the first half of 2018 and June of this year, Netscout Systems said in a new threat intelligence report.  […]

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) released its Top Threats to Cloud Computing Report today. The report, which was created after surveying 241 cloud industry experts, highlights the top 11 threats facing cloud computing. The report noted that cloud security issues are “often the result of the shared, on-demand nature of cloud computing.” […]

An August 5 alert issued by Microsoft’s Security Response Center is blowing the whistle on hacking efforts focused on three classes of internet of things (IoT) devices that Microsoft asserts are being attacked by the hacking group it identifies as “Strontium,” better known as the Russia-based cyber espionage group Fancy Bear. […]

The Federal government spent $82 billion on technology contracting in fiscal year 2018 according to a Bloomberg Government analysis, marking an $8 billion increase over FY 2017. […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seeking assistance to identify vendors that can provide simulations with virtually implanted generic medical devices using a whole-heart computational model. […]

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issues close to $360 million in potentially erroneous tax refunds on an annual basis due to the lack of e-filing for amended returns, a process that would cost approximately $4.1 million to implement, according to a July 31 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). […]

Cofense, a provider of phishing defense services announced publication of a database of more than 200 million compromised email accounts being targeted by a “sextortion” scam. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wrote to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on July 22 sharing details about its forthcoming guidance on how to securely share .zip files. […]