In today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the Committee dug into what it called “China’s non-traditional espionage against the United States.” During the hearing, senators heard from cybersecurity, and intelligence experts about China’s attempts to use cybersecurity attacks and intellectual property theft to advance its global standing. […]
Federal officials are looking at 2019 as the year of the hybrid cloud, as agencies shift from the Cloud First policy of moving pell-mell into as-a-service models to the Cloud Smart policy, which focuses more on making cloud work with legacy systems and serving agency missions. […]
In written testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee before the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) Scorecard hearing on Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted areas where Federal agencies had not implemented recommendations from previous GAO reports. […]
The Senate unanimously approved the DHS Data Framework Act on Friday, which would require the Department of Homeland Security to develop a data framework to integrate all existing DHS databases. […]
President Trump confirmed today that he intends to nominate William Barr as Attorney General and head of the Justice Department. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report Thursday highlighting the success of several Federal agencies in keeping information secure and private while sharing cyber threat indicators as part of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA). […]
The General Services Administration announced that Anil Cheriyan will be the new director of the agency’s Technology and Transformation Services unit and deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, replacing acting director Kelly Olson in early January. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs announced a new telehealth initiative and new health application programming interface (API) this week, furthering the department’s commitment to caring for veterans with the help of technology. […]
The General Services Administration announced Thursday that it will extend the lifespan of legacy networking contracts up to three years, pushing back the deadline for agencies to move to the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced on Thursday that they are granting $1.1 million to two projects aimed at improving data privacy for the department. […]
Rod Turk, the Commerce Department’s acting CIO who will be retiring next month, said in a wide-ranging discussion today that the Federal government is approaching the “tipping point” in its IT modernization efforts, and that requirements put in place in recent years to strengthen the hand of Federal CIOs in pushing modernization are resulting in less “rogue” tech projects at agencies. […]
Experts agreed today that Federal legacy network infrastructure are struggling to keep pace with the growing demands of agency cloud migrations and the continued push to modernize Federal IT systems. […]
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the General Services Administration (GSA) released its report on the agency’s biggest management challenges on Nov. 30, with the report highlighting OIG’s disagreement with GSA on the state of internal controls within the agency. […]
Microsoft today announced that it plans to expand its rural broadband initiative, dubbed the Airband initiative, to reach an additional 1 million rural Americans. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on Monday released NISTIR 8196, its draft report on the cybersecurity of mobile devices and wearables for first responders, and is seeking comment on the draft until January 7. […]
Emily Murphy, administrator at the General Services Administration (GSA), detailed the agency’s plan to consolidate 24 multiple-award schedules into one, and how the change will benefit both agencies and industry. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the topics for its Small Business Innovation Research presolicitation, with eight coming from the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T). […]
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein voiced a forceful argument on Thursday for tech device and service makers to build into their products the means for law enforcement to legally access decrypted content, but offered little that was new in the way of solutions to the problem which the Federal government has complained about for years. […]
The House on Wednesday approved by voice vote HR 6032, the SMART IoT Act, which would direct the Department of Commerce to study and report to Congress within one year on the U.S. Internet-connected device industry, including on voluntary and mandatory standards that are being developed around the world for the IoT sector, which Federal agencies have jurisdiction over the sector, and any regulations or standards those agencies have put in place that impact the IoT sector. […]
When it comes to eliminating botnets, Jeanette Manfra, assistant director for Cybersecurity for the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, stressed the importance of thinking differently and considering new solutions at the unveiling the 2018 International Anti-Botnet Guide today. […]
When it comes to customer experience in the Federal government, customers can be like your children: you love them and want to help them succeed, but you don’t get to pick them, and you have to work toward their high expectations. That was the message from Anahita Reilly, chief customer officer at the General Services Administration (GSA), during a speech today at Deloitte’s Creating a Future Forward event. […]
Dell said on Nov. 28 that it “detected and disrupted” unauthorized activity on its network on Nov. 9 that aimed to steal Dell.com customer information including names, email addresses, and hashed passwords, but not credit card or other sensitive data. Dell said “it is possible” that some data was stolen, but that “our investigations found no conclusive evidence that any was extracted.” Dell said its security measures in place–including hashing of customer passwords and a mandatory Dell.com password reset–are in place to limit the impact of any potential data disclosure. The company also said it has hired an digital forensics firm to conduct an independent investigate, and also has “engage law enforcement.” […]
The Department of Health and Human Services on Nov. 28 issued a draft strategy that the agency said is “designed to help reduce administrative and regulatory burdens on clinicians” stemming from use of health information technologies including electronic health records. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs admitted this month that its 10-year, $10 billion-plus project to create an interoperable electronic health record system incurred a $350 million cost overrun right out of the gate–a potential red flag in the latest effort to develop an integrated records system that also works with the Department of Defense’s system. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs said today it is targeting Dec. 1, 2019–a full year from now–to complete a technical fix to address problems that have plagued the agency’s ability to correctly calculate monthly housing allowance payments under the 2017 Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, also known as the “Forever GI Bill.” […]
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos highlighted the success of the Department of Education’s mobile applications during a speech on Tuesday, pointing to their convenience and ability to reach citizens in an effective manner. […]
The Department of Justice said today it indicted eight people from Russia and Kazakhstan allegedly involved in two cybercriminal rings engaged in digital advertising fraud. […]
General Services Administration officials said today they expect their plan to consolidate 24 multiple award schedules into a single schedule for products and services to take about two years to complete, and that the effort is expected to yield workforce cost savings and efficiencies for both GSA and private sector partners that sell to the Federal government. […]
In an Inspector General (IG) report released Nov. 20, the Department of the Interior got taken to task for allowing an employee to visit 9,000 pornographic websites in under seven months. This is the IG second report chastising the department for an employee viewing porn on agency time and technology. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) released a request for information detailing part of the Federal Acquisition Service’s (FAS’) new CIO Modernization and Enterprise Transformation contract–named COMET for short–and highlighted the guiding principles of cloud-native solutions, SecDevOps, and data management. […]