The information security market will grow 8.7 percent, to $124 billion, in 2019, according to a forecast released today by research firm Gartner. […]

Robert Bohn, cloud computing program manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), said today that NIST is collaborating with IEEE to create standards that would allow for interoperability between different cloud environments that currently do not exchange data freely. […]

In advance of his appearance before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee scheduled for tomorrow, four House Democrats hammered Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai over statements he made in 2017 that the FCC was a victim of a distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attack which impacted its electronic comment filing system during the agency’s net neutrality rulemaking proceeding last year. […]

The idea that you can’t trust everything you see on the Internet is a conventional, if sporadically followed, wisdom. But as hackers become increasingly skilled and sneaky, as “fake news” officially enters the dictionary, and as fake video and fake audio become more of a thing, you might not necessarily be paranoid to wonder if you can trust anything. […]

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) technology budget is vast. At just over $4 billion, it exceeds most Federal agencies’ technology budgets, and in some cases, dwarfs entire operational budgets. […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) welcomed several new faces to cybersecurity and IT leadership positions on Monday, as FBI Director Christopher Wray announced four appointments to leadership positions. […]

The National Security Agency published a news feature today that provides a new, NSA-developed resource for organizations looking to promote the well-being of their cybersecurity personnel. Dr. Celeste Lyn-Paul, senior researcher and technical advisor at NSA Research, and Dr. Josiah Dykstra, deputy technical director of NSA Cybersecurity Operations, developed the Cyber Operations Stress Survey (COSS) to help gauge stress levels of security personnel in high-risk environments. […]

Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., is pressing major electric utility companies for details about whether and when their systems have been penetrated by Russian-affiliated hackers, and at the same time is querying several Federal agencies about what they are doing to help utilities recognize and prevent attempts to break into their networks and control systems. […]

The state of Maryland is not properly securing Medicaid data and information systems, according to a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) report released today that found “numerous significant system vulnerabilities” in the state’s IT systems. […]

Following Monday’s CMS Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference at the White House, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce committed “to removing barriers for the adoption of technologies for healthcare interoperability, particularly those that are enabled through the cloud and AI.” […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are collecting industry feedback to create a “catalog of standardized metrics” for Federal commercial cloud service level agreements, according to a DISA request for information. The RFI notes that “an inter-agency working group is developing a catalog of metrics that […]

The cloud promised scale, cost-effectiveness…and simplicity. While it’s delivering consistently on the first two promises, its power to simplify complex environment remains a largely open question. […]

MITRE, a manager of Federally-funded research and development centers targeting Federal defense, intelligence, and cybersecurity functions, recommended in a new report released today that the Defense Department (DoD) undertake a sweeping menu of actions to improve military supply chain security, and warned that maintaining the status quo of current security policy may have ruinous consequences. […]

As Federal agencies adopt DevOps practices to shorten development cycles and increase deployment frequency, security must be interwoven into every aspect of the process from design, through coding, testing, release, and operation. […]

A bipartisan group of House Intelligence Committee members today introduced the Secure Elections Act that would help state and local governments apply for Federal grants to modernize their election systems and receive relevant cyber threat information. […]

People power took the stage during a panel on Thursday at FCW’s Cybersecurity Summit as participants emphasized the importance of supporting cybersecurity personnel to ensure quick and effective responses to threats. […]

During an Aug. 8 webinar on VMware Cloud on AWS hosted by the Digital Government Institute, participants said that VMware and AWS are setting up a dedicated instance of the service called VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US). This instance is intended to meet standards set by FedRAMP, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR). […]

A former top White House cybersecurity policymaker and IT systems manager at the Department of Education said today at the FCW Cybersecurity Summit that Federal agencies should expect to become targets of sophisticated cyber attacks and should count on assistance from other entities including their cloud service providers to meet those assaults.  […]

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 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is working to ensure robust cybersecurity across multiple cloud providers, said an agency cybersecurity leader at FCW’s Cybersecurity Summit on Thursday. […]

The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Deputy CIO Guy Cavallo and CTO Sanjay Gupta said today at the FCW Cybersecurity Summit that their agency’s unorthodox approach to the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program is yielding a ton of practical benefits, even though it required a bit of a departure from CDM’s initial guidelines. Now, SBA is providing a new potential model for other agencies – many struggling with the first of CDM’s four phases – to use when considering how to achieve the outcomes the program intends. […]

Agencies have 68 days remaining to achieve compliance with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) binding operation directive (BOD) 18-01, which requires the active enforcement of the Domain Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) protocol. […]

Federal agencies should reduce complexity to fight back against cybersecurity threats, government and private sector participants said during a panel at FCW’s Cybersecurity Summit. […]

A new survey from Tripwire, a security and compliance automation software provider, found that organizations need to go back to basics and make sure they are properly implementing and maintaining cybersecurity fundamentals. The survey, released today, found that organizations are not focusing on basic security controls that the Center for Internet Security (CIS) refers to as “cyber hygiene.” […]

The U.S. Cyber Command (Cybercom) and the National Security Agency have joined the effort to protect the integrity of this year’s midterm elections, which are occurring under the shadow of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that 2018 is seeing more of the same. […]

Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today at the FCW Cybersecurity Summit that continuous dialogue and attention on cybersecurity priorities are working to move the Federal government collectively in the right direction at a time when the need for unified effort is paramount. […]

Officials in government, the private sector, and academia discussed their efforts to establish a defensive posture and use technology-augmented programs to deter and detect insider threats, at an event hosted by Nextgov and Equifax Tuesday. […]

The Pentagon is looking to get into the weeds with cyber defense, using artificial intelligence to hunt down attacks that may use the size and complexity of its systems to hide out while waiting to strike. […]

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. […]

Wayne Belk, director of the National Insider Threat Task Force (NITTF), said today at an event hosted by Nextgov and Equifax that his unit in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is now working with the Defense Department to clarify and strengthen the roles of the Federal government’s insider threat staff, beginning with its security analysts. […]