Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 researchers announced on Friday that they have identified a spear phishing campaign from November 2018 that is targeting U.S. national security think tanks and academic institutions. Research indicates that the “threat actor might have interests in gathering intelligence related to not only North Korea, but possibly wider in the Northeast Asia region.” […]

Katie Nickels, a threat intelligence expert for MITRE, released a grassroots compiled list of recent cybersecurity indictments of state-sponsored hackers earlier this week. […]

The Department of Defense’s Artificial Intelligence Strategy puts the DoD on more of a fast track toward developing and employing AI and machine learning to support, as the strategy’s preface states, “a force fit for our time.” The strategy outlines an accelerated, collaborative approach with industry, academia, and allies toward new technologies that will “transform […]

Cybersecurity technologies provider Symantec reported that ransomware activity fell by 20 percent in 2018 on a year-over-year basis, but that the focus of attacks shifted sharply toward enterprises and away from consumers last year. […]

Cybercriminals armed with ransomware technologies continued to ramp up their attacks in 2018, most notably those targeting large organizations, according to a report released today by cybersecurity technology provider Crowdstrike. […]

The inspector general for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) last week released a report on top challenges for the agency, which includes both ensuring effective cybersecurity oversight of banks and implementing strong information security policies within the agency. […]

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) announced it will host a Proposers’ Day on Feb. 26 for its Secure, Assured, Intelligent Learning Systems (SAILS) program, and its Trojans in Artificial Intelligence (TrojAI) program. […]

A group of Federal lawmakers from Louisiana penned an op-ed in the Washington Times on Feb. 13 urging President Trump to increase funding for cybersecurity education. […]

Discussions this morning with a Federal agency IT professional and an IT acquisition professional revealed very different views of the Federal government’s security posture.

Shared on the condition of no attribution during an AFCEA (Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association) Bethesda event Tuesday morning, the speakers’ varying opinions showed how the balance between security and effectiveness is an issue still up for debate. […]

With the 2020 national election cycle on the horizon, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., convened a hearing Wednesday to examine the how the United States was working to secure its elections. The hearing, broken into two panels, heard from senior Federal election officials, as well as state and local election officials. […]

With the 2020 national election cycle on the horizon, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., convened a hearing Wednesday to examine the how the United States was working to secure its elections, and despite some partisan squabbling from members over the issue, a senior Homeland Security Department (DHS) official testified that election security is on the upswing. […]

IronNet Cybersecurity announced Monday that it has appointed Bill Welch co-CEO effective Feb. 11.  […]

Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Thune, R-S.D., introduced new legislation Monday to address the cybersecurity workforce shortage plaguing the Federal government. The legislation, called the Cyber Security Exchange Act, would establish a public-private cybersecurity worker exchange program. […]

Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan announced on Feb. 8 that he was nominating Lt. Gen. VeraLinn “Dash” Jamieson to serve as Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and cyber effects operations. […]

In a global cybersecurity report released Wednesday from Comparitech, the United States was ranked the fifth most secure country. […]

While there is no doubt that the House Intelligence Committee will continue to concern itself with relevant cybersecurity issues, that would not be obvious from this week’s announcement of changes to the panel’s subcommittee structure. […]

Less than two weeks after the end of the partial Federal government shutdown and with the looming threat of another such disruption coming on Feb. 15, will Federal government IT officials in large numbers be making the trip out west to the U.S.’s preeminent cybersecurity conference next month? […]

Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Dan Sullivan, R-Ark., reintroduced legislation on Tuesday that would “establish an international information sharing program on election administration and security at the State Department.” The Global Electoral Exchange Act, which had been introduced in the last Congress, would enable the United States to work with its international allies to strengthen election security by sharing best practices on audits, disinformation campaigns, and voter database protections–among other pertinent issues. […]

The call last week by the Pentagon’s top tester to temporarily halt deployment of the Department of Defense’s Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS) wasn’t exactly out of the blue. The DoD’s independent Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) said the same thing in its annual report last year, while citing some of the same problems, such as staffing shortages, difficulty in integrating disparate commercial technologies, and the lack of mature standard operating processes. […]

Department of Defense (DoD) and private sector leaders gathered to discuss the state of cybersecurity in the U.S. military during a Tuesday Federal Executive Forum webinar. […]

The Internet Security Alliance (ISA) announced Monday that it hired Dan Lips as its new assistant vice president. […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has tapped John Brown for a promotion, according to a report from The Hill. […]

In a letter on Friday, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., questioned Steven Dillingham, director of the U.S. Census Bureau, over how nearly $5 billion in IT costs are being managed by the Bureau. His concerns come as IT costs grew by $1.56 billion between October 2015 and December 2017. […]

The Bank Policy Institute, a nonpartisan public policy, research, and advocacy group, announced Thursday that it has hired Kenice Middleton to be its new senior vice president of cybersecurity risk management. […]

Valimail said in a report issued Friday that use of the Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance protocol (DMARC) is growing in both the public and private sectors, likely helped by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) mandating its adoption across Federal agencies. DMARC is an email authentication protocol that verifies the authenticity of an email’s sender in order to prevent spoofing and phishing. […]

From a cybersecurity perspective, the strengths of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are also weaknesses. The capacity to crunch massive amounts of data, identify patterns, and learn while working covers a lot of territory, but also leaves room for vulnerabilities, which Pentagon and Intelligence Community (IC) researchers want to close up. And the job doesn’t look easy. […]

Jordan Rae Kelly is now a senior managing director in the cybersecurity practice for FTI Consulting. Kelly was previously the director for cyber incident response at the National Security Council (NSC). […]

In the face of increased public scrutiny and increased calls for Congressional oversight into the social media giant’s cybersecurity habits, Facebook has made quite a few new cybersecurity hires. […]

A new report from cybersecurity firm Security Scorecard released this week found that the partial Federal government shutdown had minimal negative effects on Federal network security, and even found some positive impacts on patching and endpoint security. […]

The House on Tuesday passed H.R. 769, the Counterterrorism Advisory Board Act of 2019, which would establish a board at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to coordinate and integrate departmental intelligence, activities, and policy related to counterterrorism. […]