A bipartisan group of legislators introduced has the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Industrial Control Systems Enhancement Act of 2021. The legislation will solidify the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) lead role in protecting critical infrastructure – particularly industrial control systems (ICS) – from cyber threats. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced that it will begin overseeing the .gov top-level domain (TLD) in April 2021, with a mandate to enhance security for the domain which is considered critical infrastructure. […]

With the vast majority of Defense Department (DoD) agencies already using VMware’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) technology, milCloud 2.0’s commitment to build VMware capabilities and portability into the leading cloud platform for DoD mission partners is paving the way for unrivaled cloud-based innovation. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a draft request for proposal (RFP) searching for a Cybersecurity Compensation System Support Services. […]

The Government Accountability Office said in a new report that the 24 Federal agencies participating in the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) were expected to achieve the 2019-2020 goal of closing 230 additional data centers and saving $1.1 billion as a result. According to the GAO report on DCOI […]

The Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (OASCR) is looking for a new cloud-based Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint tracking system. […]

Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that President Joe Biden has made a slew of appointments at the Pentagon, including two in the cyber realm.  […]

Government agencies and the private sector will spend $100 billion or more to recover from the SolarWinds hack, which went undetected for at least nine months and may have compromised 18,000 government and private sector organizations using SolarWinds Orion software. Even if breached organizations successfully mitigate the damage from SolarWinds, they know adversaries aren’t going to stop trying to get in. If they plug one vector of attack, the adversary will find another to exploit. […]

This February, milCloud 2.0 – one of the key pillars of the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) cloud strategy – celebrated its third anniversary, and it continues to offer DoD mission partners a rapid path for cloud migration. […]

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Feb. 22 announced several steps to help meet President Biden’s goal to advance cybersecurity in the Federal government, including increasing spending to improve cybersecurity in some areas. […]

Federal agencies are finding their way to cloud services in increasing numbers, and through a variety of mission-specific motivations. Far from a one-size-fits-all mindset, agency decisions to undertake cloud migrations need to be evaluated through multiple project outcome priorities. Here’s a rundown of some recent agency moves to the cloud, with some advice from solutions provider Force 3 about steps that may make the move easier.   […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced it has indicted three North Korean military hackers as part of a series of cyberattacks intended to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion of money and cryptocurrency from financial institutions and companies. […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced Federal, state, and local governments to adopt a hybrid cloud environment quickly, but their hybrid strategies have not been able to keep pace with the new accelerated reality of government. The bottom line: most agencies have a strategy in place, but are having trouble executing on it fully. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), FBI, and the Treasury Department have issued a joint cybersecurity advisory about North Korean malicious activity known as “AppleJeus.” […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced today that it has revamped the FedRAMP website to “further empower agencies to use innovative cloud technologies and to continue driving security and protection of Federal information.” […]

Persistent Defense of Department (DoD) delays in getting large enterprise-wide cloud projects up and running are getting in the way of long-term Pentagon objectives on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI), and forcing some DoD operations to seek cloud work-arounds in the meantime. […]

The State Department  has issued an update to its search for contractors to support its Cloud Program Management Office (CPMO). The search is part of the department’s overall quest to modernize IT capabilities across the State Department. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) has launched a coordinated international law enforcement action to disrupt the NetWalker ransomware-as-a-service crimeware product. […]

The Oregon Army National Guard (ORANG) is seeking a cloud-based shipping and mailing solution for more than 100 users and more than 50 sites. […]

The United States Air Force (USAF) Foreign Military Sales is searching for the “most effective way to modernize [its] current foreign military sales (FMS) legacy systems.” […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) anticipates awarding a contract on behalf of the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) research arm for expert guidance to support DoD’s cloud migration efforts. […]

The U.S. Courts released a request for information (RFI) seeking Cloud Management Portal (CMP) products to support both private and commercial cloud hosting providers. […]

A new survey released by MeriTalk and Splunk finds that public sector IT decision makers are increasingly planning around zero trust security concepts, with that thinking driven by current and future requirements for telework capabilities, among other security management needs. However, agencies face challenges in migrating to zero trust, including the need to invest in foundational technologies, according to findings from the survey of 150 Federal IT decision makers and 150 state, local, and higher education (SLED) IT decisionmakers on their agencies’ efforts around zero trust. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned today that threats to government networks caused by previously reported breaches of SolarWinds Orion products pose a “grave risk” to Federal government, state, tribal and territorial governments, critical infrastructure entities, and other private-sector organizations. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service (IHS) is seeking a cloud-based video conferencing solution for its expanding telehealth program. […]

The Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program won praise from tech-sector officials at MeriTalk’s CDM Central virtual conference on Dec. 3. for its mostly unheralded work in helping Federal agencies make quick fixes to security during this year’s coronavirus pandemic. CDM Program Manager Kevin Cox offered insights as part of MeriTalk’s CIO Crossroads program in June into how his office jumped in to help agencies in need. […]

A catalyst for change, the transition to “maximized telework” forced agencies to rapidly modernize their approach to IT. But how is the need for modernization affecting cyber strategies, like the adoption of zero trust? […]

The Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program – the Federal government’s primary program to improve civilian agency cyber security – is running short on money and putting its four prime contractors on half rations until the funding situation improves. […]

GDIT and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) are building a native on-demand VMware environment to provide mission partners the power to accelerate their cloud migrations without conversion.  […]

The White House’s Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence released a new report this week with recommendations on how to leverage cloud computing resources for Federally funded AI research and development projects. […]