Federal agencies are unprepared to confront and mitigate cyberthreats today, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affair Committee Investigations Subcommittee determined in a report released today, recommending that agencies give CIOs more authority to make decisions on cybersecurity. […]
A new survey from MeriTalk finds that 70 percent of Federal IT leaders surveyed believe that FITARA (the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act) has been effective in accelerating Federal IT modernization, with 68 percent agreeing that the law has improved Federal IT efficiency. […]
Federal CIO Suzette Kent tops the witness list for the House Government Operations Subcommittee’s June 26 hearing to assess implementation of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), and to release the eighth version of the full House Oversight and Reform Committee’s FITARA Scorecard that grades Federal agencies on their progress under the law, MeriTalk has learned. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program aimed at helping Federal agencies fundamentally improve network security is moving ahead in a number of significant, future-leaning areas at the program level to advance its broad cybersecurity mission. […]
The Federal government is making progress towards its goal of improving IT spending data accountability and transparency, according to a Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goal update released June 20. […]
With vendors in various stages of approval for companies in the Federal Risk Assessment and Management Program (FedRAMP) program, getting a cloud offering approved and at the right level can be confusing, but new guidance from the FedRAMP program management office (PMO) aims to fix that. […]
School may be out, but the next edition of the biannual report card for Federal IT is coming next week, as the House Oversight and Reform Committee has scheduled its hearing for the eighth version of the FITARA Scorecard on Wednesday, June 26. […]
Michael Chertoff, formerly secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and now at the helm of risk-management and security consulting firm Chertoff Group, said today he believes that U.S. data regulation will end up taking a page from European data privacy laws by giving citizens greater ability to control what companies do with their data. […]
Agencies continue to move their data to the cloud, but increasing adoption of cloud applications outside of existing security programs like FedRAMP (the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) and the CIO’s office brings security concerns as well, a new report notes. […]
The FedRAMP program has provided more authorizations to software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and reduced the time to authorization in the last three years of the program, according to an analysis of the program. […]
News emerged on May 9 that a Russian hacker collective known as Fxmsp claimed to have breached three major U.S.-based antivirus companies. The hackers said they “worked tirelessly” for the first quarter of 2019 to obtain access to the companies’ internal networks, where they extracted sensitive antivirus source code, artificial intelligence models, web security software, and security plug-ins. […]
The Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russell Vought wrote a letter to Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and eight other members of Congress asking for a two-year delay of a ban that prohibits U.S. government contractors from doing business with Chinese-telecommunications company Huawei, in an effort to give companies more time to comply with the legislation. […]
The Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program is currently piloting the CDM Aware algorithm at different agencies, but there’s uncertainty as to whether a full implementation will be ready by October, while a soft roll out may still be in play, said Jeanette Manfra, assistant director for Cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). […]
Federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Grant Schneider said today that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is continually working towards developing standards and accountability for supply chain security and cybersecurity. […]
A draft Homeland Security budget released by the House Appropriations Committee today offers $2 billion in funding for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, $408 million more than the Trump administration’s budget request. […]
The draft Financial Service and General Government budget released by the House Appropriations Committee on Sunday, June 2, only includes $35 million for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), putting funding below the White House budget request of $150 million and more in line with the $25 million allocated in fiscal year 2019. […]
Concerns over the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) inappropriate electronics use and information security program shortfalls were two of several highlighted in NSF’s Office of Inspector General’s (OIG’s) semiannual report to Congress that was publicly released today. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) faces a number of challenges for FY2019, including improving procurement metrics reporting through the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), and in the area of agency cybersecurity, according to the GSA Office of Inspector General (OIG) semiannual report to Congress issued today. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has awarded a six-year, $276 million dollar contract to ECS Federal to develop the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Dashboard, which will enable better visibility into the data generated by sensors, according to a post on the Federal Procurement Data System. […]
China-based network equipment maker Huawei filed a motion for summary judgement in ongoing litigation with the U.S. government in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas challenging the constitutionality of Section 889 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) under which the Federal government is barred from buying Huawei equipment and services. […]
A new Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) report reviewing the Justice Department’s (DoJ’s) Criminal Division (CRM) identified vulnerabilities in five of the eight domain areas in CRM’s 2018 information security program and practices. The public report, released May 23, only summarized the full audit, but the summary said that DoJ’s Office of the Inspector […]
While artificial intelligence (AI) technology offers significant opportunities to the Federal government to both reduce costs and improve performance, implementation of the technology will require proper policy, budget, and leadership support, according to a May 22 report from the Professional Services Council Foundation (PSCF). […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program expects to announce the award of a new contract this week for dashboard ecosystem technology that will better integrate at both the Federal agency and DHS level security data generated through the CDM program. […]
The government spends 6.4 percent of its funding on IT, nearly double the 3.3 percent spent on average by industry, leading to billions spent instead of adopting commercial systems, according to a report by the Alliance for Digital Innovation (ADI) released May 18. […]
Federal CIO Suzette Kent, after surveying dozens of new and developing tech applications at the Department of Labor’s (DoL) Tech Day event in Washington, called on Federal agencies to share the fruits of those efforts across the government. […]
“It could be any day.” That’s what U.S. Bureau of Economics Analysis Chief of Policy Communication Lucas Hitt said at an ACT-IAC meeting today when he provided an update on the much-awaited release of the Federal Data Strategy, which may come out as early as this week. […]
Technology Transformation Services (TTS) leader Anil Cheriyan provided a caution to government agencies in the midst of cloud migration: don’t sprint off-prem if your main rationale is saving cash up front. […]
Federal CIO Suzette Kent met with members of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) today to discuss strengthening the partnerships between Federal and state governments. […]
The board that reviews Federal agency applications for project funding provided by the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) has been highly selective with the applications it receives and has sent most applicants back to the drawing board to improve their requests, said one of the board members at the AGA/AFFIRM CFO/CIO Summit held on May 7. […]
Federal government Chief Data Officers (CDOs) are bullish on the ability of a new government data law to spur IT modernization through improved data access, but they also see plenty of work that needs to be done before that vision becomes a reality. […]