President-elect Donald Trump during his transition is relying on two American Enterprise Institute contributors for advice on technology policy, which consists of calls for deregulation of the National Security Agency and an end to net neutrality. […]

The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education program divided $1 million in grant funding evenly among five academic institutions to support cybersecurity education among students. […]

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., spearheaded a letter signed by 15 members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to request that the committee hold a hearing on the attempts by foreign powers to influence the U.S. presidential election. […]

In determining whether agency CIOs have learned their lesson after the 2015 OPM data breach, Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, commended NASA CIO Renee Wynn on her “unprecedented” move to refuse an end-user service provider the authority to operate due to a lack of knowledge about the potential risks of that service. […]

AR

In the “Wild West” of augmented reality applications, the U.S. government has to balance the concerns of helping to protect consumer privacy and security while also leaving room for companies to freely innovate, according to witnesses at a Senate Energy and Commerce hearing. […]

In light of the recent distributed denial of service attack that prevented access to multiple U.S. websites as well as the increasing cybersecurity threat posed by Internet of Things devices, the Federal government “needs a new agency” to deal with cybersecurity, according to Bruce Schneier of Harvard University. […]

Though many small businesses may think that they are too trivial to be the target of a cyberattack, even the smallest businesses can face cyberattack and can face serious repercussions, according to Pat Toth, supervisory computer scientist in the computer security division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and author of NIST’s cybersecurity guide “Small Business Information Security: The Fundamentals.” […]

cybersecurity

If agencies improve their threat monitoring, correlation, and protection automation, they could save an estimated 27 percent, or $5 billion annually, of their cybersecurity budgets, according to a MeriTalk survey titled Pedal to the Metal: Mitigating New Threats Faster with Rapid Intel and Automation. […]

The day before the election, the White House and other Federal agencies are getting ready to mitigate and strike back if necessary, in the event of a state-sponsored cyberattack against the United States. Ann Barron-DiCamillo, former director of the Department of Homeland Security’s computer emergency readiness team, said the denial-of-service attack against Dyn in October “had all the signs of…a drill.” […]

In the wake of October’s Distributed Denial of Service attack that used hundreds of unsecured devices to prevent access to a number of U.S. websites, Reps. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., wrote a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez asking that her agency take action to ensure greater security of Internet of Things devices. […]

If government agencies don’t cooperate with both each other and the private sector on threat intelligence, they’ll never be able to keep up with the hackers working against them, according to Cloudera’s director of cybersecurity strategy, Sam Heywood. […]

The hacker group the Shadow Brokers released files Monday alleging to show which foreign governments and organizations were under surveillance by the National Security Agency. The Shadow Brokers directly asked the U.S. government to pay for the remaining files to be returned. […]

In the wake of recent Dyn attacks that temporarily shut down major websites such as Twitter, Amazon, and PayPal, Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., sent a letter to President Obama this week to request a strengthening of the U.S. ability to detect and respond to major vulnerabilities. […]

America’s Internet infrastructure could be seeing other denial-of-service attacks similar to the one targeted at Dyn last week, according to Josh Finke at Iron Bow. The large scale of the attack, the availability of the source code for the malware online, and the number of susceptible Internet of Things devices, make this type of attack attractive to hackers. […]

The Department of Homeland Security identified Mirai as one type of malware used in a recent cyberattack that brought down major websites, according to a statement from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. […]

Alongside hampering service to sites like Amazon, Twitter, and PayPal, the massive Distributed Denial of Service attack against the Internet domain name management company Dyn has also drastically affected cancer fundraising efforts by impeding transfers of funds. […]

Cyberattacks directed at the Internet domain name management company Dyn affected several major East Coast websites on Friday, causing slowdowns. “We still don’t know who is responsible,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. “Figuring out the why is also of vital importance.” […]

The United States has to formulate a conversation about cybersecurity breaches by foreign actors, according to Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, adding that the Federal government has confirmed that Russia was behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee. […]

In order to educate law enforcement officials on how to deal with digital evidence and cyber-based crimes, the FBI has created the Cyber Investigator Certification Program, a project that, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, aims to address the concerns of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) over a lack of affordable cyber training options for officers. […]

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