Federal agencies and private sector firms are easing into intelligent automation (IA) technologies by first using those technologies to tackle repetitive processes and then moving closer to artificial intelligence (AI) applications, government and private sector officials said last week. […]
DHS Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) is pivotal to improving government cybersecurity. While it’s critical, it has a lot of moving parts–and that can make it difficult to follow. MeriTalk sat down with Kevin Cox to get a handle on the state of CDM, as well as an understanding of where the program goes from here. And, it’s quite a story–so I hope you’re sitting comfortably, feel free to grab a cup of coffee. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
Rod Turk, acting chief information officer at the Department of Commerce, said Thursday at MeriTalk’s 2018 Cloud Computing Brainstorm that the commodification of IT is changing the service delivery model to make shared services an inevitability, and agencies need to shift their thinking to adapt. Turk outlined his guiding principles for priming agencies for the shared services revolution and provided a set of process questions to aid in implementation. […]
The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) Board on Thursday announced the first three Federal agencies that will receive the initial round of funding authorized by the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act. […]
Witnesses from the Federal government, academia, and the private sector zeroed in on cyber threats facing the U.S. electric grid at a House Energy subcommittee hearing Thursday afternoon. During the hearing–which largely centered around research and innovations in electric grid and energy technology–all of the witnesses stressed the importance of shoring up the U.S. electric […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
A shift to the cloud offers government agencies an opportunity to embrace digital transformation, add automation, and rethink processes, said Federal IT panelists on Wednesday at MeriTalk’s 2018 Cloud Computing Brainstorm. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
Kshemendra Paul, cloud action officer for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) chief information officer, said Wednesday at MeriTalk’s 2018 Cloud Computing Brainstorm that while DHS has yet to establish the concrete business value of cloud migration, the financial benefits are just one piece of the puzzle in proving cloud’s worth to the agency. […]
The House Homeland Security Committee today approved H.R. 5733, the DHS [Department of Homeland Security] Industrial Control Systems Capabilities Enhancement Act of 2018, that would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to give DHS’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) the responsibility to maintain capabilities to identify threats to industrial control systems (ICS). […]
Tony Scott was the Federal government’s third chief information officer, serving the nation in that role from 2015 through early 2017. During his time at the helm of government-wide IT, Scott led the development of 2016’s State of Federal IT Report, which left a lasting roadmap for modernization progress in the Federal government. […]
The digital transformation in government IT is driving modernization but also expanding the attack surface Federal agencies have to protect. The traditional perimeter no longer exists. Today, there is no “inside” or “outside” the network when it comes to detecting, defending, and deterring cyber attacks. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) on Monday released its semiannual report to Congress, and outside of recurring calls for better cyber threat information sharing, improvements to identity access management, and concerns about U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) IT acquisitions, the report appears to be free of major IT red alerts within the agency. The report covers the period from October 2017 to March 2018. […]
The Federal government is making steady progress in adopting a key anti-phishing email security protocol, installing it on systems more quickly than organizations in other sectors, if a little behind a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deadline. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
A report issued May 31 by the New America Foundation’s Cybersecurity Initiative recommends that the Federal government consider three “priority efforts” to help state governments advance their own efforts to improve cybersecurity, including “designating specific cybersecurity funding that is linked to national priorities.” […]
With the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) formally signing on last month to adopt the same electronic health records system as the Department of Defense (DoD), the two agencies are putting a lot of chips on a solution to a problem that history suggests is pretty risky. […]
Agencies need to leverage digital recruiting initiatives and enhanced data techniques to better attract talented and diverse personnel, according to human relations professionals at several Federal agencies speaking at a FedInsider webinar held May 31. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that the agency needs to improve compliance three key pieces of Federal IT Legislation, according to OIG’s semiannual report, released May 25 and covering October 2017 through March 2018. […]
Following the release of a report to President Trump on the increasing threat of botnets, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Thursday that the government is not doing enough to force the private sector to build better security into Internet of Things (IoT) devices. […]
The State Department on Thursday announced its vision for U.S. cyberspace policy based on articulated deterrents to criminal cyberattacks, protection of an open Internet, and international engagement and collaboration to achieve those goals, according to the summaries of two reports to President Trump authorized by the Cyber Executive Order (EO) of May 2017. […]
We sat down with Jeff Henry, president of ViON, in his office in Herndon, Va. The typical tech provider surroundings belied the epic changes at ViON, as it morphs from leading data center reseller to delivering government IT modernization as a service. […]
It’s probably not a shocking revelation to learn that Federal IT managers are less than happy with their agency’s IT infrastructure. Their biggest gripes, according to a recent MeriTalk survey are that it’s 1) expensive, 2) difficult to manage, and 3) inefficient. Small wonder then that the same survey found that nearly all of those who participated—92 percent of 150 Federal IT managers—were frustrated with the state of their infrastructure. […]
We are happy to present the inaugural edition of MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), passed by Congress in December 2014, represented the first major legislative overhaul of Federal IT in nearly 20 years. Beginning in November 2015, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released two scorecards a year grading agencies’ performance under the law. Suffice to say, agencies haven’t always been making the GAO’s Honor Roll, with plenty of Cs and Ds to go around. However, many agencies have made significant improvements over the last 3 years. […]
The current cybersecurity workforce shortage in the United States is daunting and only due to get worse over the next few years, the Departments of Commerce (DoC) and Homeland Security (DHS) reported to President Trump in a document released Wednesday. […]
If somebody embodies a can-do, refreshing attitude in government IT, that person is Darryl Peek, the digital innovation evangelist at DHS. Sadly for Uncle Sam and luckily for Salesforce, Peek is leaving government and signing on with Casey Coleman’s all-star team at the cloud leader. […]