The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee voted today to approve the nomination of James Gfrerer to serve as the Department of Veterans Affairs’ chief information officer and the assistant secretary of the agency’s Office of Information and Technology. Gfrerer’s nomination will now move to the full Senate for a final confirmation vote. […]
Stacey Dixon, director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), said today at an event organized by Defense One that some of the intelligence community’s more audacious research centers on using machines to predict the future–through more accurate forecasts of geopolitical events. Dixon also said IARPA research aims to translate neuroscience to neural networks, hoping that efforts to map the human brain can lead to massive strides in machine learning. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology today released a new draft publication that takes a deep dive into the issue of trust: how can we trust that the products creeping into every aspect of our day-to-day lives are secure, safe, respect user privacy, and are ultimately tools we can depend on? […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) is warning users “to remain vigilant for malicious cyber activity seeking to exploit interest in Hurricane Florence.” Alongside these recommendations, the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) released a cyber intel advisory on Sept. 14, which notes an uptick in internet activity related to Florence. […]
The House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday voted to approve S. 1281, the Hack the Department of Homeland Security Act, that would establish a bug bounty pilot program within DHS. […]
The House on Thursday approved by voice vote H.R.6227, the National Quantum Initiative Act, which would coordinate a Federal program to accelerate quantum research and development “for the economic and national security” of the United States. […]
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T) today announced awards to five research organizations as part of a new program aimed at identifying network and internet disruptions that could “significantly impact critical infrastructure systems” and “other essential systems on which society is dependent.” […]
Members of the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) board and the fund’s executive director today provided a wide range of TMF updates regarding funding and coordination with lawmakers, on the same day that House and Senate conferees met to reconcile differences in appropriations bills that will ultimately decide the fund’s spending power for FY 2019. […]
A new report published today by the Government Accountability Office is calling attention to persistent agency difficulties in complying with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), as well as difficulties with finding skilled acquisition professionals across the Federal government. […]
President Trump today issued an Executive Order that creates a structure to evaluate whether any foreign actors are attempting to influence U.S. elections and authorizes the government to impose “appropriate and meaningful sanctions against foreign individuals and entities determined to have engaged in election interference.” […]
Elizabeth Cain, the executive director of the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), estimated that there are “about a dozen” projects in the fund’s pipeline, and that new awards are around the corner. […]
A bipartisan group of senators wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday questioning the State Department on what they called its failure to meet Federal cybersecurity standards, including a “near total absence of multifactor authentication (MFA).” […]
Apple later this year will launch an online portal for law enforcement officials to submit “lawful request for data, track outstanding requests, and obtain responsive data” from the tech company. […]
Tech giants including Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, Cisco, Dell, and VMware are calling on the United States and other governments to invest in defensive, rather than offensive, cyber technologies. […]
The intelligence community has adjusted its strategy for the “second epoch” of the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise program (IC ITE) to adjust to agency needs, reduce duplication, and use artificial intelligence to free up resources for analysts, said La’Naia Jones, deputy CIO for the intelligence community at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). […]
Mike Madsen, partner at the Defense Innovation Unit, said today that DIU is preparing to wrap up its search for a new managing director who will help guide activities at DIU, the newly-elevated commercial sector outreach wing of the Department of Defense. […]
A new GAO report details how Equifax submitted to audits from agencies with which the company had contracts, but declined an offer of help from the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the company’s 2017 data breach that exposed sensitive personal information of 143 million Americans. […]
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) kicked off its new ‘AI Next’ campaign with a multi-year commitment to spend more than $2 billion on new and existing artificial intelligence programs to help create machines that can adapt to changing situations. […]
General Paul Nakasone, Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, discussed on Thursday how the service is shifting its strategy and writing the “fifth chapter” of the command’s history to address the “great powers” competition in cyberspace. […]
A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report finds that Federal agencies have not made progress on using performance information to make decisions since GAO’s last survey in 2013. […]
The FBI wants to use artificial intelligence to add a new layer to its Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, specifically to counteract the increasingly common practice of criminals altering their fingerprints. […]
Along with a slew of IT-related bills concerning the Department of Homeland Security and addressing supply chain risk and cyber monitoring, the House of Representatives also voted on Tuesday night to approve the establishment of a chief data officer (CDO) at DHS. […]
The House of Representatives on Tuesday agreed by voice vote to approve HR 6430, the Securing the Homeland Security Supply Chain Act of 2018, which grants the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary authority to exclude certain contractors from doing business with the Federal government to address “urgent national security interests” and curb supply chain risks. […]
The House of Representatives today approved by voice vote HR 6443, the Advancing Cybersecurity Diagnostics and Mitigation Act, which would codify the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program into law. […]
Christopher Krebs, Under Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), described how DHS’ National Risk Management Center (NRMC) is pinpointing the critical functions in American infrastructure and setting actionable tasks during an interview with Government Matters. […]
A pair of U.S. senators wrote to the heads of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Friday, imploring them to work with social media companies to root out election interference on their platforms and asking the agency heads for more information on the steps they’ve already taken to do so. […]
Since the Internet of Things (IoT) is a living, growing, evolving web of networks, organizations need a data architecture that can constantly adapt to its dynamic nature. For government agencies, that also means building a “holistic” data architecture that can accommodate both real-time streaming data and data stored in traditional enterprise databases, industry experts say. […]
New Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) DEFEND task orders will allow the Department of Homeland Security to be “more surgical” and “more precise” about how it helps agencies get cybersecurity capabilities, particularly for CDM’s newly-expanded category of mobile devices, CDM Program Manager Kevin Cox said Thursday at an event organized by ATARC. […]
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, asked Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons to take a fresh look at the competitive impacts of Google’s search and digital advertising practices. […]
The Department of Defense in December will wrap up a two-year pilot program using the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) mobile application store–the GEOINT App Store–as the official app store of the entire DoD. […]