Skilled workforce retention is a major problem for the Department of Defense’s IT issues, according to DOD CIO Terry Halvorsen, and salaries are partly to blame.
Microsoft Azure was selected for a FedRAMP pilot program that will establish a high-impact baseline for cloud-computing services. This essentially allows Federal agencies to move more sensitive data onto contracted cloud-computing services, enabling the sensitive data to operate on the more technically advanced level that is already possible for low-impact data.
While he was unable to address the Apple versus FBI case specifically, President Obama said he finds the discussion of encryption vitally important to national dialogue. “I am way on the civil liberties side of this thing,” he said Friday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin.
Both Apple and the FBI are taking extreme stances in the encryption debate, which makes picking a side complicated, according to a panel at the Cybersecurity for New America Conference.
The Defense Department launched its Hack the Pentagon pilot program that will leverage commercial crowdsourcing to find trusted cybersecurity professionals to help uncover vulnerabilities in the Pentagon’s public Web pages.
The Department of Defense continues to push forward with efforts to bolster its IT system. The Army awarded a $5 billion Information Technology Enterprise Solutions 3 Hardware contract for IT hardware, software, and other services, to 17 companies.
The Defense Department has made two high-profile IT moves — in the same week President Obama announced he would dedicate more than $19 billion to secure Federal IT systems — showing its dedication to cybersecurity and infrastructure.
The Department of Defense is ready to upgrade all Windows-based legacy systems to Windows 10 by January 2017. Nearly three months after Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen issued a new policy requiring the upgrade, a verbal execution order has gone out that puts the unprecedented migration effort into motion.
The National Security Agency announced Monday it is moving ahead with a massive reorganization plan that will consolidate offensive and defensive hacking operations under one command—a move that privacy and civil liberties groups, as well as a presidential review board, have warned would create potential conflicts of interest.
Ashkan Soltani, the former CTO at the Federal Trade Commission who joined the White House in December to advise U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, is stepping down after being denied a security clearance. Soltani played an active role in the Washington Post’s reporting on the National Security Agency surveillance programs leaked to the media by Edward Snowden.
Juniper Networks announced that it has been selected as the original equipment manufacturer on four contracts to modernize the U.S. Air Force network infrastructure, partnering with Affigent and ThunderCat Technology.
A MeriTalk survey finds that Federal agencies are in need of an efficiency jump-start, and 78 percent of Feds believe DevOps will help agencies innovate faster responses and services. Legacy systems are slowing agencies down, and new apps just add to the inertia.
It’s time for the Pentagon to clean up its act on cloud computing, the Department of Defense’s Inspector General said in a new report.
Shades of 1999? National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers announced the agency is in the midst of a major reorganization, dubbed NSA 21.
Robot warriors are no longer the stuff of science fiction movies. Robots will give rise to battlefields filled with humans and intelligent machines operating in close cooperation with one another and independently.
A new Federal agency is in the works to take over the security clearance process from the Office of Personnel Management, according to former intelligence officials with knowledge of the discussions. Word of the plan to create a new National Investigative Service Agency comes as security officials this week are scheduled to brief leaders of […]
Small paragraph, big impact: A little-noted paragraph in the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law Nov. 25 by President Obama, may alter the war against the Islamic State.
The market for virtual reality headsets—like the popular gaming system known as Oculus Rift, or the many headsets that are now shipping with consumer drones—is poised for rapid growth starting this holiday season. In fact, Juniper Research estimates that global sales of VR headsets will hit 3 million next year and as much as 30 […]
The Paris attacks did more than reveal the growing capabilities of the Islamic State to carry out attacks in the West; they revealed what some fear are chinks in America’s big data armor. In a world where everything seems to be connected digitally and everyone seemingly leaves behind traces of digital dust that can be […]
Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas who served two combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, introduced legislation Tuesday that would delay the termination of the National Security Agency’s bulk metadata collection program until the Obama administration can certify that its proposed new architecture for keeping the data in private-sector hands will not have a […]
MeriTalk Executive Editor Dan Verton appeared on Washington, D.C.’s NewsChannel 8 Monday to provide analysis of the ongoing terrorist threat stemming from the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. Verton is an award-winning security journalist and a former military intelligence officer. View on YouTube Part 2 View on YouTube
The Internet of Things freaks out the military. In remarks this week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Richard Hale, deputy chief information officer for cybersecurity at the Defense Department, discussed the military’s interest in–and concern over–the Internet of Things. “We in the department really need the advantage we’re going to get from […]
The U.S. military may find itself incapable of achieving decisive victory on the battlefields of the future unless it fixes its broken acquisition system and begins to experiment with new war-fighting concepts involving radical new technological capabilities.
A new study mandated by Congress in the wake of the secret waiting list scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs has uncovered significant evidence that the department’s IT leaders have for years failed to meet the technology needs of clinical professionals treating veterans on the front lines and that those IT failures, along with […]
Much of the controversial Patriot Act expires June 1, and Congress faces three choices: Keep the National Security Administration’s (NSA) surveillance capabilities intact, lessen NSA’s power, or do nothing – effectively letting the law expire.
Perennially defending itself against cyberattacks, the Pentagon will go on the offensive and unleash its cyber-arsenal against hackers.
Federal agencies are using social media as a real-time engagement and response tool and letting politicians make all the gaffes.
The military isn’t dipping its toes into cloud waters, it’s diving in. The Pentagon outspends many countries, and its 2015 cloud investment will reach nearly $773 million, accounting for 37 percent of all Federal cloud spending.
The best defense is a good offense, according to the Defense Department. No, seriously. At last week’s Cloud Computing Caucus Advisory Group Hillversation, some of the country’s most important IT leaders – tasked with oversight and protection of our nation’s military – spoke on how cloud adoption is affecting our nation’s defense.
The Defense Information Services Agency (DISA) issued long awaited guidance last week, reducing the number of classification levels for Cloud data from four to six.