A new report from The Century Foundation, a progressive think-tank, urges state law enforcement officials to take action on data privacy regulations in the absence of any substantial movement in that direction by the Federal government. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) has hired Michael Conlin as its first chief data officer (CDO). According to his LinkedIn profile, Conlin started in his new position in July. […]

Bill Zielinski has been tapped to replace Kay Ely and will serve as the acting assistant commissioner of the IT Category (ITC) for the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), a GSA official confirmed to MeriTalk today. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) announced the selection of SAP Concur for a $9.3 million contract to develop a new system to replace the current Defense Travel System. […]

Pamela Wise-Martinez, chief cloud and enterprise data architect at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, discussed the opportunities for Federal agencies to shift from disparate multi-cloud environments to effective use of hybrid cloud – marrying together on-prem, private, and public cloud use. […]

The Government Accountability Office released a report Wednesday that says the Federal government needs to provide more reliable data on employee misconduct, and suggested that Federal managers need better training to ensure that inappropriate employee behavior is dealt with appropriately. […]

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today defended his year-long public insistence that the FCC was the victim of a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack which impacted its electronic comment filing system during the agency’s net neutrality rulemaking proceeding last year, but admitted to having his own doubts about the cause of the system problem. […]

While members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee today appeared to be generally positive toward the nomination of Lane Genatowski to be the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the Department of Energy, they also had some sharp questions for the nominee over his stated support for President Trumps’ plan to get rid of the organization.   […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) organization announced it has rolled out facial recognition technology at Mineta San José International Airport (SJC). […]

The Reform Government Surveillance (RGS) coalition, whose members include tech-sector bellwethers such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, called on the Senate to take prompt action to confirm nominees to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which has only one member currently. […]

Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., has requested that the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division investigate “whether the uses of facial recognition technology – as currently utilized – by law enforcement agencies are in violation of civil rights protections.”  In a letter to assistant attorney general John Gore yesterday, Cleaver noted the potential benefits of facial […]

The Department of Homeland Security on Aug. 13-15 hosted “Tabletop the Vote 2018: DHS’ National Election Cyber Exercise,” which invited vendors and Federal, state and local election officials to participate in election security preparation. […]

The Defense Department announced Tuesday that it awarded 15 companies the right to compete for task orders in a potential nine-year, $28 billion technology research and development contract for its Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). […]

Cybersecurity solutions provider Cylance today announced that it is offering free artificial intelligence-based antivirus software “to support all 2018 U.S. political campaigns” in the wake of pervasive election security concerns across the Federal government. […]

The Army needs help from academia and the private sector to modernize its workflow, explained Maj. Gen. Garrett Yee, acting deputy CIO for the U.S. Army, during an Avaya webinar today. Yee specifically stressed an interest in industry helping to make the Army’s workflows interoperable and said that “workflows at the installation level must be scalable” to achieve true modernization. […]

The Pentagon is moving to protect its personnel from unintentionally advertising when they’re in an operational, and possibly secret, location. The new policy is a response to the revelation in January that a global heat map posted by fitness tracking company Strava could be used to identify the locations and activities of military personnel, even down to individuals, at military outposts around the world or in high-security areas such as the National Security Agency. […]

Kay Ely, assistant commissioner for the Office of Information Technology Category in the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) with the General Services Administration (GSA), will move to a task force to merge OPM and GSA operations and will subsequently retire, a GSA official confirmed to MeriTalk. Ely has served across the Federal government with the Office […]

The information security market will grow 8.7 percent, to $124 billion, in 2019, according to a forecast released today by research firm Gartner. […]

Robert Bohn, cloud computing program manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), said today that NIST is collaborating with IEEE to create standards that would allow for interoperability between different cloud environments that currently do not exchange data freely. […]

In advance of his appearance before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee scheduled for tomorrow, four House Democrats hammered Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai over statements he made in 2017 that the FCC was a victim of a distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attack which impacted its electronic comment filing system during the agency’s net neutrality rulemaking proceeding last year. […]

Uber has appointed Matt Olsen, formerly general counsel at the National Security Agency, chief trust and security officer. […]

The White House said President Trump has signed into law the NIST Small Business Cybersecurity Act, S. 770, which directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to provide resources to small businesses to help them implement NIST’s voluntary cybersecurity framework. […]

Stacey Dixon will be the next director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). […]

Fraud attacks from mobile devices and applications have grown in 2018, according to RSA’s Q2 Quarterly Fraud Report. […]

The idea that you can’t trust everything you see on the Internet is a conventional, if sporadically followed, wisdom. But as hackers become increasingly skilled and sneaky, as “fake news” officially enters the dictionary, and as fake video and fake audio become more of a thing, you might not necessarily be paranoid to wonder if you can trust anything. […]

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) technology budget is vast. At just over $4 billion, it exceeds most Federal agencies’ technology budgets, and in some cases, dwarfs entire operational budgets. […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) welcomed several new faces to cybersecurity and IT leadership positions on Monday, as FBI Director Christopher Wray announced four appointments to leadership positions. […]

China-based communications equipment maker Huawei Technologies said in a statement late Monday that the ban on Federal government use of the company’s products contained in the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by President Trump this week won’t do anything to improve supply chain security. […]

The National Security Agency published a news feature today that provides a new, NSA-developed resource for organizations looking to promote the well-being of their cybersecurity personnel. Dr. Celeste Lyn-Paul, senior researcher and technical advisor at NSA Research, and Dr. Josiah Dykstra, deputy technical director of NSA Cybersecurity Operations, developed the Cyber Operations Stress Survey (COSS) to help gauge stress levels of security personnel in high-risk environments. […]

Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., is pressing major electric utility companies for details about whether and when their systems have been penetrated by Russian-affiliated hackers, and at the same time is querying several Federal agencies about what they are doing to help utilities recognize and prevent attempts to break into their networks and control systems. […]