The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released an update for the agency’s $5 billion Information Technology Supplies and Support Services (ITSSS) contract, announcing that the agency would opt for vendors under the General Services Administration’s IT Schedule 70 and thus changing the agency’s initial strategy of an open and full recompete. […]

Defense technology providers Harris Corporation and L3 Technologies announced yesterday they will combine in a stock-swap merger of equals. […]

The Pentagon confirmed on Friday a cyber breach that compromised personal and credit card information of military and civilian personnel. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) released a new alert yesterday highlighting five publicly available tools frequently observed in cyber incidents worldwide. […]

Three senators asked President Trump in an Oct. 11 letter to provide information on whether the U.S. government operates any equipment using motherboards supplied by Super Micro Computer, Inc., which was the subject of a recent article by Bloomberg Businessweek reporting that Super Micro equipment had chips secretly implanted in the equipment that enabled backdoor data transmissions to China. Super Micro has strongly denied the claims of that report. Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., also asked what steps the U.S. has taken to ensure that Federal government equipment does not contain illicit chips, and whether the White House knows other instances of the Chinese government infiltrating technology made for end users in the U.S. They asked for a reply by Nov. 2. […]

Senators Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asked the chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer in an Oct. 9 letter whether the company has ever found evidence of tampering of components or firmware that targeted the company’s products, among other questions stemming from a Bloomberg Businessweek article reporting that chips made by a Chinese firm and allegedly used by numerous U.S. companies and government agencies were engineered to enable backdoor data transmissions to China.  […]

Three Senate Democrats asked Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Joseph Simons in an Oct. 10 letter to open an investigation into Google’s disclosure earlier this week that it discovered and patched in March a vulnerability in its Google+ social media platform that may have exposed profile data on up to 500,000 accounts, but did not inform users of the vulnerability in a timely way. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced yesterday that Yanjun Xu, a Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) operative, was extradited to the United States Tuesday on charges of conspiring and attempting to commit economic espionage and steal trade secrets from U.S. aviation and aerospace companies–including GE Aviation. […]

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that DHS is still preparing to go public with a new “resilience agenda” […]

McAfee and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) today released a new report about modernizing Social Security Numbers (SSN) in light of growing privacy and security concerns over using SSNs as a de facto personal identifier. The […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense announced a joint agreement between Defense Secretary James Mattis and VA Secretary Robert Wilkie to work together on the new electronic health records (EHR) systems in both departments. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General said in an unclassified summary report dated Sept. 28 that it has given the agency’s Science and Technology Directorate a total of nine recommendations that it believes would strengthen S&T’s management of insider threat risks […]

The chairmen of the House Intelligence and Oversight and Government Reform committees have asked for classified briefings from top U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies on a recent Bloomberg Businessweek report that Chinese hackers infiltrated numerous U.S. companies and government agencies through a supply-chain hardware hack involving implantation in network equipment of a chip that can route data back to China. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced today that Romeo Vasile Chita, a Romanian national, was returned to the United States last Friday to face Federal charges of racketeering, wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to launder money, and conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit services charges. […]

A new survey from One Identity, a maker of identity and access management (IAM) solutions, finds that 77 percent of IT security professionals polled in the United states, Europe, and elsewhere said it would be “easy” for them to steal sensitive information from their companies if they were to leave those organizations. […]

Cerner announced a number of partnerships to support the company in its $10 billion contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs to modernize the VA’s electronic health records system. […]

Google announced today plans to shut down its Google+ social media platform in August 2019, and that it patched a vulnerability in the service in March that potentially exposed Google+ user data. […]

The U.S. Navy said it increased General Dynamics Information Technology’s contract ceiling from $177 million to $270.2 million for the Personnel Modernization (PERSMOD) contract. […]

On Wednesday, officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Energy (DoE) met with the Oil and Natural Gas Sector Coordinating Council and announced a collaborative initiative to improve pipeline cybersecurity. […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced the launch of an interactive data tool to display substance abuse data along with other public information, allowing local leaders to “build grassroots strategies to address the opioid epidemic,” the department said in its announcement. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today released NIST Internal Report 8202, Blockchain Technology Overview. […]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will in the coming weeks release a new regulation that will allow the Federal government to directly hire cybersecurity personnel, significantly slimming a lengthy hiring process that has bogged down the Federal government. […]

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will conduct its first national test of the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system on Wednesday. […]

The Partnership for Public Service announced nine award winners of The Samuel J. Heyman Award, known as the Sammies. The winners will be celebrated at a gala on Tuesday evening, including the digital service team at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). […]

Akamai, a content delivery network and cloud service provider, and Slack, a provider of cloud-based collaboration tools and services, have joined BSA | The Software Alliance as new global policy members. […]

The Air Force has welcomed new IT leadership, naming Eileen Vidrine its new chief data officer. […]

Greg Garcia became the Army’s new deputy CIO on Monday. Garcia replaces Gary Wang, who retired from the position in May. […]

The Department of Justice’s Cybersecurity Unit–part of the agency’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section–has issued an updated best practices document for victim response and reporting of cyber incidents. […]

President Trump today signed legislation that effectively funds Federal government operations through Dec. 7. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) yesterday issued a warning that cyber actors are increasingly exploiting the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to conduct malicious activity. […]