The House of Representatives passed the DHS Software Supply Chain Risk Management Act of 2021 this week with a 412-2 vote. […]

Dr. Laurie Locascio, the White House’s nominee to be the next director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), told senators this week that she will prioritize cybersecurity of internet of things (IoT) devices, and bridging the cyber workforce gap if she is confirmed to head the agency. […]

Nickolas Guertin, who President Biden nominated to be the Department of Defense’s (DoD) next director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), sees testing for cyber threats and building cyber testing into the test and evaluation process a priority for the next DOT&E. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken on a number of recent initiatives to build a diverse cyber workforce, which DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly outlined today during the third week of the CISA Cybersecurity Summit. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced today that it has awarded $2 million to bring cybersecurity training programs to rural communities and diverse populations. […]

The Senate Appropriations Committee released nine appropriations bills for fiscal year (FY) 2022 on October 18 including a Homeland Security funding bill that would give the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) a 30 percent budget increase over FY2021 levels, to $2.638 billion. […]

Agency (CISA) provides insight into what Federal buyers will be looking for in technology central to the Biden-Harris administration’s network visibility-focused cybersecurity executive order, specifically on network endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities. […]

The Treasury Department released a new report that found ransomware victims paid $590 million during the first six months of 2021, which is more than the value reported for the entirety of 2020 ($416 million). […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint advisory on Oct. 18 warning organizations that the BlackMatter ransomware group is targeting U.S. critical infrastructure entities. […]

In the new era of cyber defense, Ted Okada, chief technology officer (CTO) at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), stressed that IT leaders must take the right risks to lead their teams in risk management efforts. […]

Democrats in both the House and Senate have introduced bills to fund a cybersecurity grant education program at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).      […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint cyber advisory Oct. 14 warning of an ongoing cyber threat to U.S. Water and Wastewater Systems (WWS) facilities and gave the WWS sector recommended mitigations. […]

Research from MeriTalk shows that 83 percent of government cybersecurity leaders say their organization operates on an “assume breach” model – assuming their networks have already been breached, or will be. However, cybersecurity experts stress that it’s equally important to put efforts into breach prevention, which involves crucial steps such as identifying all network assets. […]

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced Oct. 13 that Erie Meyer, a founding member of the agency’s tech and innovation team, will return to CFPB as its next chief technologist. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) hired Lt. Col. Jody Ogle, longtime cybersecurity and IT expert, as a cybersecurity advisor at the agency. […]

While Federal government cybersecurity dominates news headlines this year – from the Biden administration’s executive order (EO) to the spate of high-profile attacks on government and private sector targets – Federal government chief information security officers emphasized this week the importance of tried and true best practices, current tooling, and workforce education in the campaign to improve defenses. […]

The White House charted progress today following the conclusion of its two-day virtual Ministers and Representatives from the Counter Ransomware Initiative Meeting, and outlined several priority efforts to reduce the risk of ransomware attacks globally. […]

As the cyber threat landscape continues to morph for entities at the Federal level, so too does it change for governments at the state, local, and tribal level. For the state of Illinois, adding cyber into emergency management and working closely with counties has helped to better prepare the state for cyber threats. […]

The Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative created in August by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has the potential to greatly help Federal government authorities and private sector firms better “connect the dots” on global threats in cyberspace, said National Cyber Director Chris Inglis in remarks on October 13 during CISA’s National Cybersecurity Summit event. […]

The new world of Federal government cybersecurity is quickly taking shape, and MeriTalk’s Cyber Central: Defenders Unite virtual event on October 28 is hosting the policy-makers and industry leaders that are bringing the next generation of technologies to bear to protect the networks that bring vital services to all Americans. […]

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Executive Director Brandon Wales said today that the private sector needs to do more to help the government combat ransomware attacks, and expressed hope that the recently formed Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) effort between government and industry will go a long way toward providing a coordinated approach to deal with those and other cybersecurity threats. […]

When implementing a successful zero trust architecture, Federal chief information officers (CIOs) and chief information security officers (CISOs) encourage agencies to look towards modernization and to think of zero trust as an “integration architecture.” […]

The Biden-Harris Administration is taking steps this week to gin up international support to fight ransomware as the White House National Security Council (NSC) hosts a two-day virtual assembly with 30 foreign partners to discuss joint efforts to counter the attacks. […]

Cybersecurity is the ultimate team sport, Jim Richberg says in a new MeriTV interview. It requires greater public-private cyber information sharing – called for in the May Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity (EO) and backed up by several new pieces of legislation – but the conditions for it must be established over time, he advised. […]

On Oct. 8, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan K-12 Cybersecurity Act of 2021 into law to provide school districts with resources to combat and protect themselves against cyberattacks. […]

In a recent letter to the Department of Justice (DoJ), the Department of the Treasury (Treasury), the Department of State (State Department), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lawmakers urge the agencies to pursue all options available to protect American communities and infrastructure from the growing threat of ransomware. They emphasized the need for stronger coordination between departments, primarily to address the role of cryptocurrency in ransomware attacks. […]

Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., introduced legislation that would revamp the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Office for Policy Analysis and Development to have a stronger focus on cybersecurity efforts. […]

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is giving Federal agencies a three-month deadline to make initial strides at identifying the current state of endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities on their networks and to start undertaking additional work with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to quicken the pace of deploying those capabilities. […]

Microsoft’s new Digital Defense Report finds that Federal agencies and organizations have been the most targeted sector by cyber threat actors since the middle of last year, and that attacks emanating from Russia have been the most frequent. […]

With Federal agencies needing to move the bulk of their workforce to remote or hybrid environments since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program has worked with agencies to account for the increase in attack vectors and take a more proactive risk management stance, CDM Program Lead Richard Grabowski said. […]