The hype around cloud services in the Federal government could lead to substantial increases in adoption over the next year, according to new research conducted by MeriTalk. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) deadline for agencies to adopt Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) and have policies set to “enforcement” levels is one week away, and new research from Valimail says only half of agencies have deployed the new standards. […]

Gov. Jerry Brown on Sept. 28 signed into law S.B. 327, which will ban companies from selling Internet-connected devices with weak or default passwords, such as “Password” or “1234567.” Instead, beginning on Jan. 1, 2020, all devices must have a “preprogrammed password [that] is unique to each device manufactured.” A primary concern with weak pre-programmed passwords is that users don’t change them to strong, unique passwords after purchasing the device. […]

Department of Defense CIO Dana Deasy described how DoD is approaching cloud services, including the Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI), and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies during an interview on “Government Matters” on Sunday. […]

Apple told congressional leaders in a letter dated today that a story last week by Bloomberg Businessweek–reporting that chips made by a Chinese firm and used in Apple equipment were engineered to enable backdoor data transmissions to China–is “not true.” […]

A new, stealthy Internet of Things (IoT) botnet has emerged with the capability of stealing information from a wide range of devices, underscoring the need for the Federal government to provide guidance on how agencies can reduce risks associated with the deployment of their IoT networks. […]

Christopher Krebs, Department of Homeland Security under secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), said Thursday that NPPD is focusing on the cybersecurity fight of both today and tomorrow, through the various coordinating centers that fall under NPPD’s purview. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) today announced that a grand jury has indicted seven officers, all Russian nationals and residents, in the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), a military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. […]

Following the long-awaited passage of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Act in the Senate, the head of the organization set to be elevated as the nation’s official cybersecurity agency expressed his satisfaction at how congressional approval of a simple name change will reinforce the authority of the Federal government’s lead organization in cyberspace. […]

The Senate passed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act (CISA Act) on Wednesday by unanimous consent but included some amendments, setting up a few remaining steps before the bill reaches President Trump’s desk. […]

Government is getting cloud smart. We know that cloud platforms are driving digital transformation and modernization across agencies. But they’re also allowing government to rethink how it delivers services, mission requirements, and innovation. […]

California Governor Jerry Brown on Sept. 29 signed S.B. 1001 into law. The legislation prohibits automated accounts–colloquially known as bots–from pretending to be human when attempting to “incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election.” […]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will in the coming weeks release a new regulation that will allow the Federal government to directly hire cybersecurity personnel, significantly slimming a lengthy hiring process that has bogged down the Federal government. […]

Locked in our technology siloes, the word “cloud” has become common vernacular. Working in IT, we know what it means, and we know at this point the kind of potential cloud computing unlocks. It’s not a big step to say that it will underpin technological innovation for the foreseeable future. […]

At the National Association of Corporate Directors Global Board Leaders Summit on Monday, Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Director Christopher Wray stressed that the FBI and corporate executives must work together to keep companies safe from cybercrime. Wray called on executives to report cyber incidents to the FBI as soon as possible, explaining that the FBI needed the info to have a clear understanding of the current threat landscape. […]

Sanjay Gupta, chief technology officer at the Small Business Administration (SBA), discussed last week how his agency has aggressively moved to the cloud while keeping security at the forefront with new pilots to meet Federal requirements. […]

President Trump on Friday declared October 2018 as National Cybersecurity Awareness Month – marking the 15th consecutive year of that designation. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) yesterday issued a warning that cyber actors are increasingly exploiting the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to conduct malicious activity. […]

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday voted to approve a handful of bills that place a strong emphasis on cybersecurity, IT supply chain security, and the enhancement of digital citizen services. […]

As the Federal government shifts its cloud strategy from “Cloud First” to “Cloud Smart,” IT leaders at the Infor Government Forum described how their previous cloud migration efforts have shifted their agencies’ mindsets and brought new successes to their department. […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s cybersecurity and personnel subcommittees held a joint hearing today to examine the cyber operational readiness of the Department of Defense and heard from leaders of both the military and civilian side of the DoD cyber force about the mounting challenges they face. […]

The software industry group BSA | The Software Alliance offered its support for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Act in the Senate. […]

The Office of Management and Budget today released a draft of its new Cloud Smart strategy, marking the first update to White House guidance on Federal agency cloud adoption since 2011. With the new draft strategy the administration has broadly highlighted three areas–security, procurement, and workforce–as the foundational areas of the strategy and where it feels that updated guidance is most necessary. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Friday that Ruslans Bondars, the operator of counter- antivirus service “Scan4you,” was sentenced to 14 years in prison. […]

A new survey conducted by the International Information System Security Certification Consortium, also known as (ISC)², found that 50 percent of well-performing organizations surveyed have successfully recruited government cybersecurity talent. […]

As Federal agencies migrate applications to the cloud, data integration can be a major stumbling block that prevents them from reaping the benefits of cloud services. While agencies are putting more applications in cloud environments, often the underlying technologies connecting these applications are still on-premise. As a result, information technology teams must spend time provisioning and maintaining their middleware infrastructure to avoid performance bottlenecks. […]

The National Cyber Strategy policy document released by the White House late Thursday tracks in tone and wording with the tough stance adopted in the Defense Department’s cyber strategy announced earlier this week–including its adoption of a more offensive-minded position than previous written policies–and appears to respond in tone to demands from across the political spectrum that the U.S. fashion policy that will do a better job in creating a deterrence effect against adversaries. […]

The Federal government is continuing its push to update the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative to provide “improved solutions for accessing cloud services while maintaining cybersecurity,” according to the latest progress updates to the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). […]

The general election in 2016 was a watershed moment for Federal, state, and local election officials. […]

The Office of Management and Budget recently released its Q3 FY 2018 progress update to the President’s Management Agenda’s cross-agency priority (CAP) goals, and for CAP goal No. 1, IT Modernization, it appears that there has been a notable progression on cloud adoption in the Federal government. […]