Four months after taking the helm as acting director of GSA TTS–the agency’s innovation hub–Kelly Olson today announced plans to leave the agency. […]
The Senate voted to confirm Benjamin Hovland and Donald Palmer as commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), allowing the commission to hold a quorum for the first time since March. […]
The Senate confirmed James Gfrerer as Assistant Secretary for the Office of Information and Technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs Wednesday evening on a voice vote, filling the permanent CIO role that had been vacant since the start of the Trump administration. […]
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced Friday that FCC will investigate last week’s nationwide CenturyLink outage, which impacted 911 service across the country. The outage, which primarily impacted Western states, began shortly after 8 a.m. ET on Dec. 27 and was resolved by 9 p.m. ET on Dec. 28. […]
The State Department is looking to secure its mobile devices and protect against malicious apps–with an app. The department released a request for information on Dec. 20, asking vendors for information about an endpoint protection platform for mobile devices. Responses are due by Jan. 18. […]
A day after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filled its board of commissioners for the first time since April 2018 by confirming Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks to full five-year terms, the FCC shuttered most of their operations on Thursday amid the partial government shutdown. […]
The Department of Labor on Dec. 27 released a request for information on a proposal for a new financial management system, with an eye towards a potential move to the cloud and data analytics capabilities. Responses are due by 11 AM on January 16. […]
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said last month it established a new program called Pilot IRS that will look to investigate and acquire emerging technologies that will help the agency better serve taxpayers. […]
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) found that NSF could improve its mobile device security after finding devices that were not enrolled in the agency’s management program, and finding inappropriate apps on work devices. The agency agreed with those recommendations. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) newly-minted cybersecurity component agency, along with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), have furloughed substantial chunks of their workforce as a result of the continuing partial Federal government shutdown, according to planning documents issued last month. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last week released its Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices, a set of voluntary cybersecurity guidelines for the private sector that leverages the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework to address cybersecurity issues across healthcare organizations of all sizes. […]
The Department of Homeland Security announced last month that it will offer $800,000 in grants to startups and small businesses for blockchain counterfeiting solutions through its Science and Technology Directorate’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program. […]
When the Big One hits, the United States won’t be ready for it. […]
When it comes to protecting mobile devices and applications, Federal agencies need security capabilities that travel with devices and proactively protect them against all types of cyberattacks, experts say. […]
A new GAO report released yesterday found that while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made progress in implementing its information security program, deficiencies still put agency systems at risk. […]
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr., D-N.J., today wrote Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and called for her to “take urgent action to protect America’s pipelines from cyber attack.” The letter follows a report released today from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which detailed issues American pipelines face defending against cyber attacks. […]
Delays in processing veteran’s benefits have led to overpayments of $4.5 million through February 1, 2018, and veterans who have received these overpayments will have to pay the money back. […]
The Department of Justice (DoJ) today announced the seizure of 15 domains associated with distributed denial-of-service-for-hire services, as well as criminal charges against three individuals who facilitated the domains. […]
An audit of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to ensure adequate compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) shows a need for improvement in IT security. […]
The Department of Justice (DoJ) today announced hacking and identity theft charges against two members of the Chinese state-sponsored hacking group APT-10, alleging that the APT-10 members hacked into American organizations and stole personally identifiable information on more than 100,000 Navy personnel. […]
The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said on Wednesday it took a series of actions against Russian operatives for election interference and other malicious cyber activities. […]
The Department of Justice (DoJ), citing the increased number of cybercrimes being tackled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has doubled its broad goal of FBI actions to combat cyberattacks in FY 2019, although FY 2018 statistics indicate that the FBI could end up handling a much heavier workload than that. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it plans to not recompete the Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading-Edge Solutions (EAGLE) II contract, and instead pursue a “suite of contract vehicles,” according to a Dec. 17 press release. […]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) updated their goals on modernizing its information technology through an action plan that is focusing on customer-focused, evidence-based, and tax-dollar efficient technology. […]
An update to the cross-agency priority (CAP) goal of quality shared services–one of eight such goals contained in the President’s Management Agenda released in March–found the Federal effort to meet the goal making some steady, if slow, progress. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released the final version of its new risk management framework (RMF)–NIST SP 800-37 Revision 2–addressing both security and privacy concerns in IT risk management. […]
According to an internal memo obtained by SpaceRef, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) suffered a breach of employee personally identifiable information (PII), leaving civil service employees who worked for the agency from July 2006 to October 2018 potentially affected. […]
In the President’s Management Agenda, issued in March, President Trump called on the Federal government to modernize the Federal workforce. In the months that followed, the Federal government has made significant progress on the cross-agency priority (CAP) of workforce improvement, but still has a ways to go, according to an update released yesterday on Performance.gov. […]
A newly issued Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlights gaps in implementing Federal guidance on cybersecurity at major agencies in fiscal year 2017, finding 35,277 cybersecurity incidents. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) is seeking comment on a draft set of technical guidance and recommendations to improve the security and robustness of interdomain traffic exchange. […]