The White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) released a report today showing the United States’ cybersecurity posture has improved over the last year, driven by progress on the administration’s March 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS). […]
The National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the Department of Energy (DoE), today awarded 35 projects first-round access to the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot, which is a shared national infrastructure to support the AI research community. […]
Department of Transportation (DoT) Secretary Pete Buttigieg always says that safety is the DoT’s “North Star.” According to the department’s top cyber and IT official, safety is no longer possible without cybersecurity. […]
NASA’s spacecraft development programs lack mandatory cybersecurity controls for acquisition policies and standards, placing the technology at risk of cyberattacks, the Federal government’s top watchdog said this week. […]
Former Commander of the United States European Command said today there are key elements the U.S. needs to safeguard national security: the awareness of a jellyfish, the speed and agility of a cheetah, and the willingness to hold up that boulder like Greek mythological figure Sisyphus. […]
In March, MeriTalk recognized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the annual FITARA Awards ceremony for winning in the “Most Improved” category. EPA’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Tonya Manning told MeriTalk in an exclusive interview that the agency is keeping up the momentum by moving forward on several innovative cyber and IT projects – including AI implementation and supply chain cybersecurity. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced at a White House event today that the agency is launching a project to overhaul the Federal government’s hiring process for the IT management job series – transitioning to a fully skills-based approach by the summer of 2025. […]
As the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) celebrates the one-year anniversary of its Secure by Design initiative, the agency is looking to elevate the effort in public conversation and have customers make more demands of software vendors. […]
The Department of Commerce announced today it has reached a preliminary agreement with Micron Technology for up to $6.14 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act to build leading-edge memory semiconductors in the United States. […]
The Pentagon’s administrative and management support agency has developed and will soon implement a customer experience (CX) management plan, an agency official said on Tuesday. […]
The Department of Commerce’s (DoC) Economic Development Administration (EDA) made public today the details of the 31 technology hubs’ proposals for the second phase of the new Tech Hubs program – revealing a collective request of $2 billion in funding for a total of 182 projects. […]
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has artificial intelligence (AI) on the brain, and coming in first on the list of the agency’s lineup of new AI-driven projects is “Concierge AI” – a new tool that integrates data with AI. […]
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has been slowly identifying areas within its enterprise that would benefit from automation and other artificial intelligence-enabled improvements, but bringing those ideas to fruition will be a challenge, the agency’s finance chief said this week. […]
The head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said today that the Federal government has a “powerful” ability to mandate security standards for software vendors through its procurement process. […]
Federal CIO Clare Martorana forecasted this week that the hundreds of millions of dollars of investments that the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) has made in recent years to jumpstart Federal agency security improvements will be bearing fruit within the next 12 months. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced today that Director Kiran Ahuja will step down from her role in the next several weeks. […]
A review of the Defense Department’s component-level zero trust security implementation plans is painting a clearer picture of trends and challenges running through the three-dozen-plus plans – including the vital importance of proper funding for components, and achieving interoperability across component zero trust plans – to meet DoD’s 2027 zero trust deployment goal. […]
The Department of Commerce announced a preliminary agreement today for up to $6.4 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act for Samsung Electronics to bring advanced semiconductor manufacturing and research and development (R&D) to central Texas. […]
Sean Connelly, who has been long been a prime mover on zero trust and other security policies for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), will soon be leaving Federal government service to join cloud security provider Zscaler, the company confirmed to MeriTalk. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) publicly issued an emergency directive today calling on Federal agencies to take immediate action to reset authentication credentials following a breach of Microsoft corporate email accounts by Russian state-sponsored cyber actor Midnight Blizzard. […]
As the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) nears a contract award for its Supply Chain Modernization (SCM) program, lawmakers are calling on the VA to provide more information on the coming contract to avoid another “failed” IT modernization project. […]
The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) announced two new investments today totaling over $47 million that will help NASA and the Department of Labor (DoL) address security vulnerabilities and update legacy technology. […]
House and Senate committee leaders on Sunday evening unveiled a discussion draft of their latest effort to create a national data privacy law via the American Privacy Rights Act of 2024, which notably features provisions that would allow people to opt out of the use of their data for creating algorithms that could impact a host of major life decisions. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) is on track to meet its 2027 zero trust cybersecurity framework goal, top Pentagon officials said this week. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) today issued a final rule confirming protections for career civil servants against the potential reemergence of a controversial Trump-era Federal workforce policy that aimed to create a new “Schedule F” for employees in policymaking roles that would make it easier to fire them. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) released findings late Tuesday following its independent review of the summer 2023 Microsoft Exchange Online intrusion that attributed the success of the China-based hack to “a cascade of security failures at Microsoft” and an “inadequate” security culture at the company. […]
Matt House, who runs the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program, previewed today that his office is working on an effort to better explain how the CDM program supports the Federal government’s push toward zero trust security architectures, and specifically the Zero Trust Maturity Model (ZTMM) that CISA last updated in April 2023. […]
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) said it’s working on a list of longstanding IT management problems previously flagged by the agency’s inspector general, and it estimates taking action on most of those by Aug. 30 of this year. […]
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is currently developing a new cloud service management platform to ease barriers and burdens to services, a top cloud expert at the agency said on Wednesday. […]
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) today released its finalized policy document for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) within Federal agencies, delivering on-time a core component of the administration’s October 2023 AI executive order (EO). […]