U.S. and China tech competition, AI

The United States needs to ramp up its investments in critical and emerging technologies – such as semiconductors and AI – in order to keep pace in the global race for technological leadership, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation (NSF). […]

The Biden-Harris administration approved a secure software development attestation form on Monday, taking a crucial step towards ensuring Federal contractors provide secure products to the Federal government. […]

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is urging the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to improve its workforce planning functions and collaboration with critical infrastructure providers as it helps those providers to address security weaknesses in operational technologies (OT). […]

Department of Veterans Affairs, VA Health Care Center

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced on Saturday that it has officially deployed its Oracle Cerner electronic health record (EHR) system at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (Lovell FHCC) near Chicago – the only healthcare facility to serve both Department of Defense (DoD) and VA patients. […]

The Federal government should provide economic incentives such as tax deductions or Federal grants to critical infrastructure providers and other organizations that adopt cybersecurity best practices, the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) said in a March 7 report. […]

After 16 years in the Federal government, the Education Department’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) Luis Lopez is departing this month to head to the private sector, a department spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk. […]

With foreign adversaries looking to disrupt operations of American institutions and collect their sensitive data, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is taking steps to better secure its own data while at the same time making it easier for agency personnel to access the information they need, an NRC official said on March 7. […]

federal workers workforce IT workers employees millennial -min

The Advanced Research Projects Agency For Health (ARPA-H) has tapped Alastair Thomson as the agency’s new acting director of data innovation, according to his LinkedIn account. […]

CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has announced three initial key actions to help secure the open source ecosystem upon the conclusion of its two-day Open Source Software (OSS) Security Summit this week. […]

Government Accountability Office (GAO) officials told lawmakers at a House Small Business Committee hearing on March 6 that the Small Business Administration (SBA) still needs to implement key management improvements for COVID-19 relief programs to prevent further fraudulent activity. “Although SBA helped millions of small businesses with its pandemic relief programs, our concerns about [implementation […]

CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is undergoing a large-scale modernization process with plans to migrate the majority of its legacy IT systems to a brand-new “greenfield solution” later this year, according to CISA Chief Information Officer (CIO) Robert (Bob) Costello. […]

GSA General Services Administration

Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, has introduced legislation that aims to create more transparency into work being done by the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Technology Transformation Services (TTS) organization, which is in charge of implementing modernized technologies across the Federal government. […]

To align with the Biden-Harris administration’s President’s Management Agenda (PMA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has committed to leading the first-ever Agency Priority Goal (APG) dedicated solely to advancing customer experience (CX). […]

Treasury

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has announced a new round of sanctions against members of the Intellexa Consortium for distributing “Predator” branded commercial spyware technology to target American citizens. […]

Budget Federal spending

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees released their first package of fiscal year (FY) 2024 appropriations bills on Sunday, boosting to over $8 billion the budget for the Energy Department’s (DoE) Office of Science which is responsible for overseeing programs funded by the CHIPS and Science Act, among others. […]

The Biden administration is taking a swing at the Chinese vehicle industry with the news late last week that the Commerce Department will probe the national security implications of China-sourced vehicle tech that could pose national security concerns. […]

VA, Veterans Affairs

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees released their first package of fiscal year (FY) 2024 appropriations bills on Sunday including a bill that provides over $6 billion in IT funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with a cut in the White House’s request for money to fund VA’s electronic health records program. […]

DoD

The Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest contracting agency in the Federal government – with contracts ranging from IT services to major weapon systems – leaving the agency inherently susceptible to fraud. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that the Pentagon can get a better handle on mitigating fraud by leveraging data analytics. […]

Gigamon event
Gigamon event
CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the FBI and international partners, released a cybersecurity advisory (CSA) today to warn about the ongoing exploitation of multiple vulnerabilities within the Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure gateways. […]

Government agencies and private sector firms need to boost their cybersecurity capabilities to keep pace with increasing threats and should turn to AI and quantum computing for help in pursuing that goal, Federal cybersecurity experts said today at the Visualyze Zero Trust Security Summit hosted by MeriTalk and Gigamon in Washington, D.C […]

The Department of Energy’s (DoE) Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) announced this week the allocation of $45 million for 16 projects aimed at developing new technologies to prevent cyberattacks and reduce energy disruptions from cyber incidents. […]

AI
data privacy, people, personal data, binary

In response to President Biden’s AI executive order (EO), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DoE) have officially established a Research Coordination Network (RCN) dedicated to advancing privacy research. […]

Cyber workforce people
Danny Werfel, Daniel Werfel, IRS commissioner

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