During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on securing elections, witnesses from law enforcement agencies were asked a litany of questions related to the security of U.S. elections for 2020, including what kind of new measures were being taken during this cycle. […]

Erica Thomas, a robotic process automation (RPA) Program Manager at the Department of Defense (DoD), said Oct. 21 that efforts to deploy RPA technologies in financial accounting systems are providing a boost in the morale of agency employees who are being freed from performing repetitive tasks. […]

DoD Pentagon Military

The Department of Defense is making progress on both its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and a new policy on software development in the department, said Ellen Lord, undersecretary of acquisition at the Pentagon, in a press conference today. […]

DoD Pentagon Military

The Department of Defense plans to centralize the recruiting databases of its service branches into one system for cybersecurity and reduced duplication, according to a notice set to be posted on the Federal Register on October 16. […]

FBI

FBI CIO Gordon Bitko announced on LinkedIn that Oct. 11 was his last day with the agency and will be joining the Information Technology Industry (ITI) Council as senior vice president of policy. […]

White-hat hackers have scooped up $33,750 through Hack the Proxy, the eighth hacker-focused cyber challenge created through a partnership between the Defense Department (DoD) and HackerOne. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) is partnering with Defense Digital Service (DDS) and HackerOne to launch the second Hack the Army bug bounty challenge. The challenge, which will run from Oct. 9 to Nov. 8, encourages hackers to attack more than 60 publicly accessible web assets to improve the DoD’s cyber defenses. […]

Nakasone US Cyber Command

Army Gen. Paul Nakasone – who heads both the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command – said today that the first focus of NSA’s recently launched Cybersecurity Directorate will be to shore up protection of companies that make up the nation’s Defense Industrial Base (DIB), and specifically to prevent the theft of intellectual property from DIB companies. […]

Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology

The U.S. Navy announced on October 8 that it awarded the first portion of its Next Generation Enterprise Network Recompete (NGEN-R) contract to HPI Federal, with the company set to provide end-user hardware to the service branch. […]

Navy seal

The Navy is looking at cybersecurity and IT support for its oceanography and meteorology units, with the goal of providing a full range of services for multiple bases, according to a request for information released October 3. Responses are due by October 28. […]

The U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) is looking to invest in a few areas for artificial intelligence (AI) and are focusing more on capabilities within those areas, officials said today at the Defense TechConnect Innovation Summit. […]

Cyber workforce
Federal Cloud Flag

The Army Futures Command (AFC) has established cloud as a foundational part of its IT strategy, but is considering the possibility of moving all applications to its cloud-based Unified Data Environment, as noted in a request for information released October 1. […]

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Sept. 30 officially transferred the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) to the Defense Department (DoD), a move that makes the Pentagon responsible for nearly all – about 95 percent – of government security clearance investigations. […]

Acquisition

Criteria for acquisitions to use the lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) process will be released on the Federal Register Oct. 2 and have been finalized for Department of Defense (DoD) agencies, according to an upcoming Federal Register post and a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released September 26. […]

cybersecurity
Navy seal

The Department of the Navy named Aaron Weis, senior advisor to Department of Defense (DoD) CIO Dana Deasy, as the Navy’s new CIO and principal staff assistant to the Secretary of the Navy on IT management, digital, data, and cyber strategy on September 27. […]

Budget Federal spending
Air Force

The United States Air Force (USAF) announced Air Force Explore, a call to action for “capability ideas that advance the transformational component of the Air Force Science and Technology 2030 strategy,” on Sept. 26. USAF anticipates awarding four to seven awards, each within the $1-2 million range. […]

speed

The Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA) is initiating a program that aims to accelerated distributed applications and improve network stack performance “by a factor of 100 through the creation of clean-slate networking approaches,” according to a Sept. 26 news release. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) and the Defense Department’s (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) announced today they are teaming up for a “discovery sprint” as part of GSA’s Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative. […]

Federal cybersecurity officials spoke about the strategies they’re pursuing to address workforce issues within their agencies during a Sept. 18 Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Cybersecurity Summit panel. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced the first-annual President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition, an interagency effort to identify, challenge, and reward the “best personnel supporting cybersecurity and cyber excellence” in the government. […]

Senate hearing Congressional-min

The Senate version of the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes multiple provisions in the bill’s report that push the Department of Defense (DoD) to make greater investments in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI). […]

Machine learning AI-min
big data

Formalizing the roles of Federal agency chief data officers (CDO) – a relatively new position for many Federal agencies – is well underway but still far from finished, two agency CDOs indicated on Sept. 16 at the Professional Services Council’s Tech Trends Conference. […]

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