The Senate this afternoon convened to discuss H.R. 5515, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (NDAA), which is headed for a vote later tonight and is expected to be approved. […]
As the Federal government looks to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to help improve citizen services and lower government costs, applications that enable this new computer-based intelligence via application programming interfaces (APIs) might be the least disruptive and inexpensive way for agencies to get started. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
The unique role of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in leading cybersecurity efforts for the entire civilian Federal enterprise presents a unique challenge and one that requires the government to rethink its understanding of risk, DHS’ Jeanette Manfra said Thursday at MeriTalk’s Akamai Government Forum. […]
With new threats emerging to and from the data economy, a zero trust IT security approach can solve some of the problems that come with digital transformation, said Jeff Pollard, principal analyst at IT sector research firm Forrester at the Akamai Government Forum on June 14. […]
The zero trust model of IT security has a wide range of applications from protecting government data to helping to secure election infrastructure, panelists said at the Akamai Government Forum on June 14. […]
David Nelson, chief information officer of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Wednesday at ATARC’s Cloud & Data Center Summit that technology providers are using outdated talking points when describing the attitudes of CIOs in the Federal government, and called upon vendors to assist government leaders, instead of discussing the shortcomings in their agencies. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report Thursday that found many Federal agencies are not entirely up to speed in classifying members of their cybersecurity workforce, although many of them have traveled well down the road toward compliance. […]
Howard Marshall, deputy assistant director of the cyber division at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said Thursday at MeriTalk’s Akamai Government Forum that the bureau is taking a proactive approach to defending and apprehending when it comes to cyber criminals. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
Leadership of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on Wednesday pressed the head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for necessary follow-up to passage earlier this year of the MOBILE NOW Act. […]
Dr. Tom Leighton, chief executive officer of cloud service provider Akamai, said Thursday that data center defense on its own is woefully inadequate to handle capacity available at the edge of the network to launch distributed attacks. […]
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is considering limiting the network damage that can result from Web browsing by having employees take it outside. […]
Proposals with great citizen impact, quick routes to success and repayment, and concise explanations of how to achieve their goals are likely to win the remaining dollars in the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), according to representatives from the General Services Administration (GSA) speaking at a workshop held June 8. […]
Joseph Klimavicz, chief information officer and deputy assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice, today previewed an updated IT strategic plan he is working on that will focus on improved service delivery, more intelligent and autonomous processes, a further push to shared services, improvements to network security, and use of advanced analytics and machine-learning technologies. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) of the General Services Administration (GSA) on Wednesday announced the winners of the inaugural FedRAMP Five Awards at ATARC’s Cloud & Data Center Summit. […]
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced 14 bills out of its business meeting today, including legislation to protect against drone threats and to establish a framework for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that will improve data sharing across DHS’s numerous component agencies. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will release a new government-wide Federal cloud computing strategy sometime in the next few months, OMB Digital Services Expert Bill Hunt said Wednesday at ATARC’s Cloud & Data Center Summit. […]
The possibilities of quantum computing have been floating on the horizon for a while now, at least since renowned physicist Richard Feynman dreamed up the idea in 1982. But like the horizon itself (at least in a world that isn’t flat), it always seems to recede despite all efforts to close in on it. Until now. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said on Monday that an amendment they introduced last week to defense legislation that would ban government agencies from buying goods and services from China-based communications equipment makers ZTE and Huawei made the cut for inclusion into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2019. […]
Akamai today released an Attack Spotlight recounting how it mitigated the largest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in its history. Earlier this year, an Akamai client, an unnamed software company, was the target of a massive DDoS attack–one that broke the 1 terabyte per second threshold for the first time. […]
Can software-defined storage help support the data center modernization efforts of Federal agencies and help them meet ambitious Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) milestones? […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
Remotely operating an unmanned vehicle (UxV) has often been compared to playing a video game. But while there is a lot more to it than that, the military has found that games do have value in helping them identify potential recruits who have the abilities needed for drone piloting. New programs by the Navy and Air Force are reinforcing the idea that specifically tailored gaming systems can reveal the cognitive skills and personality traits necessary to operate their growing ranks of UxVs. […]
Federal agencies are facing a tall order in cleaning up their cybersecurity practices in the wake of some tough love dished out by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in a risk assessment and action plan released May 30. Agencies need to streamline processes, better share information, and finds ways of getting a better return on their cyber investments, all of which can be harder than it sounds. […]
Federal agencies and private sector firms are easing into intelligent automation (IA) technologies by first using those technologies to tackle repetitive processes and then moving closer to artificial intelligence (AI) applications, government and private sector officials said last week. […]
Legislative direction moving Federal agencies toward incremental development in their software initiatives is beginning to take hold, and Agile development methodologies have been a key driver of that success, according to an agency CIO, a leader in government IT modernization, and an industry executive assisting agencies in Agile adoption. […]
DHS Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) is pivotal to improving government cybersecurity. While it’s critical, it has a lot of moving parts–and that can make it difficult to follow. MeriTalk sat down with Kevin Cox to get a handle on the state of CDM, as well as an understanding of where the program goes from here. And, it’s quite a story–so I hope you’re sitting comfortably, feel free to grab a cup of coffee. […]