Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, introduced legislation today to codify into law the Department of Homeland Security’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program, in order “to advance and modernize” the program and ensure procedural policies for it. […]

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. […]

Following a July 16 letter by former government officials requesting disclosure of 2020 Census cybersecurity policies, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a statement today affirming its “robust cybersecurity program” and ensuring interested parties that cybersecurity remains paramount at the bureau. However, it said it was declining to reveal all of its encryption policies “as a matter of data security.” […]

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR) on Tuesday approved two bills that would put procedures in place to swiftly terminate underperforming Federal employees, adding legislative fuel to the fire burning over Federal workforce rights further stoked by President Trump’s recent executive orders. […]

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the General Accountability Office (GAO) isn’t fully compliant with the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA), according to a report released yesterday. […]

During today’s House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection hearing to discuss oversight of the Federal Trade Commission, Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., said she was introducing legislation calling for a common definition of blockchain. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced Tuesday that it struck a deal with Veritas to provide Federal agencies with software for data governance and cloud management. […]

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGR) on Tuesday approved by voice vote a bill which would allow Federal agency heads to limit access to certain websites or deploy cybersecurity measures if they feel that it is necessary to secure their IT systems, but not before strong vocal dissent about the scope of the legislation. […]

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 Defense Department’s (DoD) Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is looking to transition the Defensive Cyber Operations (DCO) infrastructure of its Acropolis program to the cloud, according to a Sources Sought Announcement posted Monday. […]

Matt Goodrich, FedRAMP director, and Ashley Mahan, FedRAMP evangelist, addressed industry feedback to FedRAMP’s recently released authorization boundary guidance during a webinar today. […]

Members of the House Energy and Commerce’s Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee expressed broad agreement today that the Federal government needs to do more to promote the availability of broadband service in underserved and unserved areas of the United States, but appeared to signal little in the way of any unified sentiment to coalesce around any of several existing bills that aim for that goal. […]

A large group of former Federal government officials–including national security and other experts from the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Justice–urged Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross in a letter released yesterday to disclose the 2020 Census’ data protection and cybersecurity policies. […]

CGI Federal has won a task order worth an estimated $530 million to provide services under the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program to CDM’s Group C Federal agencies, a CGI spokesperson confirmed today. […]

The Hide ‘N Seek (HNS) Internet of Things (IoT) botnet, which initially targeted home routers, IP cameras, and video recorders, has been expanded by cybercriminals to target two NoSQL database servers, making it a cross-platform botnet. […]

Federal IT pros clearly have their heads in the clouds–as government efforts increasingly focus on leveraging cloud computing to help support mission-critical workloads, securely and cost-effectively. […]

Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a July 13 blog post that the Federal government, along with lawmakers in governments worldwide, must develop appropriate regulations for the use of facial recognition technology by individuals, organizations, and government entities. […]

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. […]

It’s the Monday after a 6-goal barnburner in the World Cup final, a torrential downpour trophy ceremony, and we’ve now entered the era of existential dread for the world’s soccer fans. Reality sets in. It’s four years until the world’s biggest sporting event comes back around. […]

As far as the Department of Defense is concerned, artificial intelligence is a team game, particularly where robots are concerned. […]

Lawmakers last Wednesday decried a surreptitious industry effort to correct longstanding hardware vulnerabilities affecting nearly all modern computer processors. The reason? The Federal government didn’t get the memo. […]

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. […]

Irv Dennis, chief financial officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), on Thursday described HUD’s plan to use the largest-awarded sum from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF)–including timelines for rollout and repayment–in an appearance on Government Matters. […]

Adopting cloud isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition for Federal agencies. Instead, agencies looking to modernize their enterprise IT are customizing their adoption approach to fit their agencies’ structure, according to government and industry executives leading a Capital Exchange webinar on July 12. […]

Using digital records instead of paper-based ones can save government agencies money and help them provide better service to their constituencies, said speakers during Government Technology’s “Going Paperless: How to Do It and What You Will Gain” webinar on July 11. […]

The term “information warfare” might call to mind Russian trolls exploiting social media, but there has always been a lot more to it than disinformation campaigns on Twitter, or for that matter the airborne propaganda leaflets or Tokyo Roses of wars gone by. Information warfare, or IW, is a key element of every military operation. It spans cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum, involving communications of all kinds such as Global Positioning System readings and satellite operations, as well as economic transactions, every level of surveillance, and old-school radio and TV. […]

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 House Energy and Commerce Committee today approved by voice vote a measure that would direct Federal agencies to study Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and whether to regulate them, along with two others aimed at spurring further rollout of broadband services in mostly rural areas of the United States. […]

Amid mounting concern about attacks by foreign adversaries on the Department of Homeland Security’s supply chain, two House subcommittees met today to discuss that threat and legislation proposed by the White House–the Federal Information Technology Supply Chain Risk Management Improvement Act–that would respond to the problem. […]

The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee today officially approved the creation of a new Technology Modernization Subcommittee to oversee the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Electronic Health Record (EHR) modernization and other major IT projects. […]