Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked the Senate Sergeant at Arms in a March 13 letter to disclose to each member of the Senate “the extent of the cyber threats faced by the U.S. Senate–and by extension, our democracy,” and said disclosure of that information was “imperative in order to help the U.S. Senate address important cyber-security needs.” […]

The Director of National Intelligence has announced the appointment of Erin Joe as director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC), which as its name suggests integrates cyber threat data from government and other sources, facilitates threat-data sharing and supports government interagency planning of responses to adversaries. […]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will not be providing its regular quarterly update on President’s Management Agenda (PMA) goals this month. […]

Rep. William Hurd, R-Texas, stressed at IBM’s Think Gov event today that America needs to lead the world in developing 5G wireless networks and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, especially with China on the rise as a voracious international competitor, and said successful development and application of the two technologies are inextricably linked. […]

The Cybersecurity Skills Integration Act introduced in the House last week to jumpstart development of career and technical education training initiatives that incorporate cybersecurity into the curriculum–appears to have one major unresolved issue: competing for qualified instructors in the white-hot market for cybersecurity professionals. […]

Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Department of Homeland Security, provided an update to Congress today about how CISA is working to secure election infrastructure ahead of the 2020 Presidential election. […]

While opening a Senate Small Business Committee hearing on cybercrimes against small businesses today, committee Chairman Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., announced his rollout of two pieces of legislation which would aim to create greater accountability at the Small Business Administration (SBA) and to expand small business cybersecurity awareness and training resources. […]

A bipartisan AI caucus was announced today, led by Sens. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio. […]

Artificial intelligence (AI), following on the heels of its older sibling RPA (robotic process automation), is no longer waiting to be born, but remains more of a toddler on the Federal IT scene–still learning to walk before trying to run, but bulking up from an appetite for serious Federal government tech interest and investment. […]

Security controls across eight Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) operating divisions (OPDIVs) need improvement to better detect and counter cyberattacks, the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a report issued today. […]

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency awarded a new multiple-award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract to General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), the company said. […]

Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, issued a statement on Tuesday urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “pause” activities to spread the use of facial recognition technologies and develop policy that will further inform U.S. citizens about the technology and what happens to the data that it generates. […]

John Legere, CEO at T-Mobile U.S., told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee at a hearing on Tuesday that the carrier does not use equipment provided by China-based Huawei or ZTE in its network, and pledged to “never” use gear from the two Chinese firm in T-Mobile’s 5G network. […]

Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Tuesday introduced legislation that would update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which became law in 1998 and regulates the ability of website and online service providers to collect information about users under the age of 13. […]

Emily Murphy, administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), explained the agency’s extensive portfolio of IT modernization work at a GSA oversight hearing held today by the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. […]

As the Federal government continues toward technological modernization, the General Services Administration (GSA) announced yesterday in a blog post that it is offering a new Software License Management (SLM) program–SLM Fast–to more efficiently, securely, and cost-effectively manage software. […]

In what it calls a “strategic decision” that will allow its personnel to concentrate on cyber operations and its warfighting mission, the Air Force is trying to get out of the business of providing end-user services, such as device management, help desks, and the underlying network infrastructure. Instead, it is contracting those jobs out to industry as part of a network-as-a-service (NaaS) experiment. […]

After reviewing 24 Federal agencies that cover work in IT, cybersecurity, or cyber-related projects, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a report today that six of these agencies did not accurately categorize the work roles of their work positions and that 22 assigned non-IT roles to about 19 percent of their IT positions. […]

Representatives from the Defense Department (DoD) presented the department’s artificial intelligence (AI) program initiatives and need for collaboration with the private sector to accomplish them in a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee today. […]

The Defense Department’s FY 2020 budget proposal which was included as part of President Trump’s budget proposal rolled out yesterday, calls for a total of $9.6 billion of cyber spending, up more than $1 billion from the $8.5 billion DoD cyber spending total cited by the White House in FY2019 budget documents. […]

The IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2019 has gained 12 new cosponsors in the House. […]

An internal U.S. Navy report found that the service branch and its industry partners face a severe barrage of cyberattacks from China, according to an article from the Wall Street Journal today. […]

Amid the challenges of modernizing IT acquisition, Federal IT leaders today discussed how their agencies have made progress in speeding up the process, and how they can scale up. […]

Successfully implementing DevOps methodology requires a maturation process and cultural shift for organizations, experts from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) advised today. […]

After committing to DevOps – a software development practice that combines development and information technology (IT) operations – two and a half years ago, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has made major strides in increasing the speed and efficiency of its IT initiatives, according to Kaschit Pandya, IRS Enterprise Operations deputy associate CIO. […]

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology met today to hear testimony on H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act, which would roll back net neutrality rules to their 2015 level. […]

Through efforts such as the Centers of Excellence, common standards, and consolidation of schedules, the General Services Administration is looking to support modernization efforts across government and modernize its own systems and processes, GSA Administrator Emily Murphy said today. […]

The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) industry consortium have come up with validation software that can be used with any device and could go a long way to securing the supply chain for computing devices. […]

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel warned Michiganders today that the information of 600,000 of the state’s citizens may have been compromised in a ransomware-caused data breach. […]

Although the Trump administration’s FY2020 budget proposal details a plan to broadly modernize the government, the fine lines in each department’s proposed funding show that the White House is more specifically geared toward researching and developing artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, IT systems, and technological infrastructure. […]