The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) today published an updated, second version of its Zero Trust Maturity Model that is guiding Federal agencies and other organizations along the path to adopting zero trust security architectures. […]
Making the General Services Administration’s (GSA) FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) process more efficient for cloud service providers appears to be on the radar of the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) as the ONCD moves toward the implementation planning phase of the National Cybersecurity Strategy released last month. […]
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly warned on Thursday that the United States needs to quickly determine the regulatory landscape for development of AI technologies, which she said have the potential to become the most consequential – and perhaps dangerous – technologies of the 21st century. […]
The Department of Defense is collaborating with Federal civilian agencies to impose a new Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) rule that would apply new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) requirements to vendors that handle controlled unclassified information, according to the DoD CMMC lead. […]
A group of Republican senators recently reintroduced legislation that would require that the Energy Department’s (DoE) Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) be led by a Senate-confirmed assistant secretary. […]
MeriTalk recently sat down with Dewaine Beard, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDAS) in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Information and Technology (OIT), to talk all things IT modernization and workforce. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) spends billions of dollars each year on IT, but a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that the agency did not get the approval of its chief information officer (CIO) for many IT contract awards from fiscal year (FY) 2021. […]
MITRE Corp.’s Center for Data-Driven Policy is urging Congress and the Biden administration to embark on a new campaign to speed the migration of Federal agencies away from legacy IT technologies, and to hold government’s feet to the fire on that effort by providing transparent ways to track progress. […]
Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., and his Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee colleagues Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, are planning to introduce legislation in the coming days that would increase oversight of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) program, order technical fixes to current problems with the system, and leave room for the agency to pursue alternative tech strategies if need be. […]
A top official from the General Services Administration (GSA) today pledged the agency’s commitment to fully implement recommendations from a recent Office of Inspector General (OIG) report that revealed that GSA misled Federal agencies for years by falsely claiming that its identity-proofing website – Login.gov – met government standards for identity-proofing. […]
The White House is targeting June to release its implementation plan for the National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) unveiled earlier this month, an Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk. […]
The Department of Transportation (DoT) has received its first-ever Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) award worth $6.43 million to use in helping to upgrade tech at the agency’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) component, according to DoT Chief Information Officer (CIO) Cordell Schachter. […]
President Biden signed an executive order today that prohibits Federal agencies from using – on an operational basis – commercial spyware technology if the use of that technology would pose risks to U.S. national security, or if the technology “has been misused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses around the world.” […]
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is doing a major upgrade of the Federal government’s 30-year-old top-secret network, with cloud services playing a major factor in the modernization effort, a senior DIA official said on March 23. […]
A top Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) official said this week that generative AI – like ChatGPT – will alter the threat landscape by making it easier for adversaries to produce high-quality phishing capabilities and ransomware campaigns. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) sees limiting cloud service sprawl and increasing interoperability as top priorities in modernizing the agency’s technology enterprise, and the looming $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contracts as vital to that effort, a top Pentagon tech official said on March 21. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has developed more than 1,400 recommendations for modernizing and realigning its health care infrastructure, but a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is finding gaps in the data VA used to inform the recommendations. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has issued new implementation guidance to agencies for the Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program that was signed into law last June. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is driving forward on one of the Biden administration’s key technology agenda items – citizen service improvement – by reworking the agency’s main OPM.gov website so it makes more sense to the several different populations who rely on it the most. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is set to resume deployments of its Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program this summer, but members of Congress and the Federal government’s chief watchdog agency are not confident that this time around will be different from the last. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said on March 15 that multiple attackers were able to compromise a system at one unnamed Federal civilian executive branch agency from November 2022 to January 2023, and issued an advisory for other organizations to take action to mitigate any similar vulnerability. […]
Who’s on your list for the Most Valuable Players in helping to ensure the nation’s cybersecurity? MeriTalk wants to hear from you – now through April 14 – with nominations for our 2023 Cyber Defenders Awards that will honor those individuals who have made significant contributions across cyber programs in Federal IT. […]
The Biden administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget request includes a total of $74 billion of IT spending for Federal civilian agencies and $12.7 billion for cybersecurity spending, according to a budget appendix released by the White House on March 13. […]
Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, today pledged that his committee will conduct tough oversight of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to ensure that the agency “responsibly” carries out its mission without branching into excessive regulation. […]
The Federal government and private sector are not going to achieve their missions alone and both sides need to lean into public-private partnerships in order to “bounce higher,” according to a 30-year national security and intelligence agency veteran. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) on Thursday rolled out a new cyber workforce plan which takes aim at the department’s workforce retention challenge – the task now is to effectively implement the enterprise-wide plan. […]
President Biden has proposed a 5.2 percent pay raise for Federal employees in his budget plan released today for fiscal year (FY) 2024. If enacted, the increase would total the largest annual pay raise for Feds in 43 years. […]
If you’ve been wondering how much the Federal government is investing in its sweeping effort to migrate to zero trust security architectures, the answer to that question may be coming this week. […]
With the Biden administration’s new National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) out the door last week, Acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden is laying out the next steps for implementation of the strategy, including possible inputs into Federal budgets that will begin to see the light of day later this week. […]
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) administrator said today that the Federal government’s recent historic investment in broadband is this generation’s one chance to connect everyone in the country. […]