Federal CIO Suzette Kent provided a demonstration this morning at the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council’s (ACT-IAC) Imagine Nation ELC Conference to help envision a future for government services that may not be that far away. […]

A new draft of the Federal Data Strategy is out, and Federal IT leaders are looking for feedback on the proposed practices and objectives that will further advance the President’s Management Agenda (PMA).  […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) machines can out-think humans when it comes to a lot of complex, fine-grained tasks, such as detecting signs of cancer more accurately than doctors can, or finding exoplanets based on “dimming effect” data from distant solar systems. But what they don’t have is good old common sense, the ability to apply its knowledge, and the experience to various tasks humans can do from childhood. […]

The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University released a new study yesterday examining the 24 million comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding net neutrality between April and August of 2017. […]

Two Federal government officials speaking today at an event organized by the Consortium for IT Software Quality expressed concern about what they see as an increasingly high turnover rate in recent years among Federal agency chief information officers and chief information security officers. […]

Emily Murphy, administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), delivered a keynote address today that provided a glimpse of her vision as the head of GSA, along with recent government IT wins and the path she sees ahead for the agency serving as the Federal facilitator for IT acquisition and modernization. […]

At the request of several Federal agencies, the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) has created and released a framework for organizations to better share indications and warnings (I&W) of cyberattacks and deconstruct that data into indicators that can be monitored. […]

Federal Deputy CIO Margie Graves said today that the forthcoming update to the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) Initiative is coming “extraordinarily soon.” With the update, there seems to be an acknowledgment that the former ways of TIC–now over a decade old–will be yielding, including the TIC architecture often seen as expensive and inflexible to cloud technologies. […]

Christopher Krebs, under secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), said DHS is not seeing an increased number of cyberattacks on election systems, but “a consistent and persistent level of activity” in that arena. […]

Health insurance provider Anthem has agreed to pay the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR) $16 million to settle what HHS called “potential violations” of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in connection with an Anthem data breach in late 2014 and early 2015 in which cyber criminals stole data on nearly 79 million individuals including names, Social Security numbers, medical identification numbers, and email addresses, among others.   […]

Following the fifth EU-U.S. Cyber Dialogue last month in Brussels, the United States and the European Union today released a statement reaffirming their “strong partnership in favour of a global, open, stable and secure cyberspace where the rule of law fully applies, where the same rights that individuals have offline are protected online, and where the security, economic growth, prosperity, and integrity of free and democratic societies is promoted and preserved.” […]

Today marks the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) deadline for Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 18-01, which requires Federal agencies to adopt the Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance protocol (DMARC) for email authentication. […]

As Federal agencies continue to amass vast amounts of data, it’s inevitable that some portion of it won’t hold a ton of value to an agency’s mission. It could be a simple email to schedule your next meeting, or it could be notes scribbled on a Word document and stashed on an agency server. Outside of its immediate use at that point in time, there’s not a strong need to store it in perpetuity. […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released an update for the agency’s $5 billion Information Technology Supplies and Support Services (ITSSS) contract, announcing that the agency would opt for vendors under the General Services Administration’s IT Schedule 70 and thus changing the agency’s initial strategy of an open and full recompete. […]

Defense technology providers Harris Corporation and L3 Technologies announced yesterday they will combine in a stock-swap merger of equals. […]

A bipartisan group of three senators–Sens. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Ben Cardin, D-Md.–last week introduced Protect Our Elections Act, which aims “to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require states to take steps to ensure domestic ownership and control of election service providers.” […]

The Pentagon confirmed on Friday a cyber breach that compromised personal and credit card information of military and civilian personnel. […]

Cybersecurity training and education programs need to emphasize systems engineering perspectives in order to fully understand system vulnerabilities, said leaders from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) during an Oct. 10 webinar hosted by the agency’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE). […]

A new report from MeriTalk finds that Federal legacy network infrastructure may be struggling to keep pace with the growing demands of agency cloud migrations, next-generation technology, and the continued push to modernize IT systems. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) released a new alert yesterday highlighting five publicly available tools frequently observed in cyber incidents worldwide. […]

Later this month government and private sector leaders will gather for a frank discussion about redefining government cybersecurity. The conversation could hardly be more timely: the Federal government is facing seemingly endless challenges, from evolving threats and aging legacy systems to budget constraints and workforce gaps. […]

The Senate on Thursday voted to approve three nominations to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). […]

Three senators asked President Trump in an Oct. 11 letter to provide information on whether the U.S. government operates any equipment using motherboards supplied by Super Micro Computer, Inc., which was the subject of a recent article by Bloomberg Businessweek reporting that Super Micro equipment had chips secretly implanted in the equipment that enabled backdoor data transmissions to China. Super Micro has strongly denied the claims of that report. Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., also asked what steps the U.S. has taken to ensure that Federal government equipment does not contain illicit chips, and whether the White House knows other instances of the Chinese government infiltrating technology made for end users in the U.S. They asked for a reply by Nov. 2. […]

With new guidance released Thursday offering more direct hire authority to agencies, including in cybersecurity and IT areas, the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) is aiming to fill positions that are critical to meeting the missions of agencies, said OPM Deputy Director Michael Rigas during a Thursday interview with Government Matters. […]

Top Federal officials are pointing to new research from MeriTalk and the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) as evidence that the Trump administration’s Federal government IT modernization efforts are making solid progress. […]

Kelly Olson, the new acting director of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS) organization, spoke Thursday about ongoing progress with the Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative that’s being run out of TTS, providing a glimpse into the maturation and coming expansion of the program. […]

The recent Department of Homeland Security alert describing ongoing cyberattacks on global managed service providers highlights the need for the U.S. government to take a lead role in protecting internet infrastructure, according to some industry cybersecurity experts. […]

A new memo from the Office of Personnel Management offers new hiring authorities to agencies in key STEM-field areas, including cybersecurity related jobs. […]

Senators Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked the chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer in an Oct. 9 letter whether the company has ever found evidence of tampering of components or firmware that targeted the company’s products, among other questions stemming from a Bloomberg Businessweek article reporting that chips made by a Chinese firm and allegedly used by numerous U.S. companies and government agencies were engineered to enable backdoor data transmissions to China.  […]

Mike Duffy, acting deputy director for the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Network Resilience Division, said today that many Federal agencies are expecting to have all of their .gov domains protected from email spoofing campaigns, ahead of an October 16 deadline to do so. […]