Health insurance provider Anthem has agreed to pay the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR) $16 million to settle what HHS called “potential violations” of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in connection with an Anthem data breach in late 2014 and early 2015 in which cyber criminals stole data on nearly 79 million individuals including names, Social Security numbers, medical identification numbers, and email addresses, among others. […]
Following the fifth EU-U.S. Cyber Dialogue last month in Brussels, the United States and the European Union today released a statement reaffirming their “strong partnership in favour of a global, open, stable and secure cyberspace where the rule of law fully applies, where the same rights that individuals have offline are protected online, and where the security, economic growth, prosperity, and integrity of free and democratic societies is promoted and preserved.” […]
Today marks the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) deadline for Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 18-01, which requires Federal agencies to adopt the Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance protocol (DMARC) for email authentication. […]
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. […]
Cybersecurity training and education programs need to emphasize systems engineering perspectives in order to fully understand system vulnerabilities, said leaders from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) during an Oct. 10 webinar hosted by the agency’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE). […]
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. […]
With new guidance released Thursday offering more direct hire authority to agencies, including in cybersecurity and IT areas, the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) is aiming to fill positions that are critical to meeting the missions of agencies, said OPM Deputy Director Michael Rigas during a Thursday interview with Government Matters. […]
Kelly Olson, the new acting director of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS) organization, spoke Thursday about ongoing progress with the Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative that’s being run out of TTS, providing a glimpse into the maturation and coming expansion of the program. […]
The recent Department of Homeland Security alert describing ongoing cyberattacks on global managed service providers highlights the need for the U.S. government to take a lead role in protecting internet infrastructure, according to some industry cybersecurity experts. […]
A new memo from the Office of Personnel Management offers new hiring authorities to agencies in key STEM-field areas, including cybersecurity related jobs. […]
Mike Duffy, acting deputy director for the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Network Resilience Division, said today that many Federal agencies are expecting to have all of their .gov domains protected from email spoofing campaigns, ahead of an October 16 deadline to do so. […]
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” […]
Agriculture Department CIO Gary Washington laid out his agency’s IT modernization journey today, beginning with USDA’s work as the lighthouse agency for the Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative, and continuing with the agency’s selection as one of the first three to receive an award under the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF). […]
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 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. […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) recently founded an artificial intelligence (AI) community of interest (COI) for anyone in DHS with an “interest in the subject.” […]
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) deadline for agencies to adopt Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) and have policies set to “enforcement” levels is one week away, and new research from Valimail says only half of agencies have deployed the new standards. […]
The White House on Friday announced the appointment of Margaret Weichert as acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), replacing Jeff Pon at the helm of the agency. […]
A new, stealthy Internet of Things (IoT) botnet has emerged with the capability of stealing information from a wide range of devices, underscoring the need for the Federal government to provide guidance on how agencies can reduce risks associated with the deployment of their IoT networks. […]
Christopher Krebs, Department of Homeland Security under secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), said Thursday that NPPD is focusing on the cybersecurity fight of both today and tomorrow, through the various coordinating centers that fall under NPPD’s purview. […]
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. […]
Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said today that DHS has “become a political piñata” in Washington since his time as the agency’s head, even as the scope of the work and associated challenges have grown across the Department’s vast range of component agencies. […]
The Department of Justice (DoJ) today announced that a grand jury has indicted seven officers, all Russian nationals and residents, in the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), a military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. […]
Following the long-awaited passage of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Act in the Senate, the head of the organization set to be elevated as the nation’s official cybersecurity agency expressed his satisfaction at how congressional approval of a simple name change will reinforce the authority of the Federal government’s lead organization in cyberspace. […]
Matt Lira, special assistant to the president for innovation, policy, and initiatives at the White House Office of American Innovation, has a unique visualization exercise to help consider how we should address problems in the Federal IT space. […]
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. […]