Across several agencies with the Department of Defense (DoD), building a zero-trust architecture to secure IT systems is becoming the strategy of choice for agency leaders as several confirmed efforts to transition over from a traditional perimeter approach today. […]
Federal agencies have made significant progress on open data, but the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not issued implementation guidance or performance reports under the OPEN Government Data Act, according to a report released today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). […]
A new report from the White House’s National Quantum Coordination Office (NQCO) identifies eight quantum technology “frontier” areas that it says contain “core problems with fundamental questions” confronting quantum information science (QIS). […]
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Chad Wolf said today that his agency has not identified any threat that could change vote tallies in next month’s elections, but did say citizens should expect that the final results of all elections may not be clear by the conclusion of election night, November 3. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) is looking for information and cost estimates on a technical solution that can help manage, route, and resolve inquiries from Federal agencies and the public. […]
Officials from the Department of Labor and the Army Corps of Engineers reported this week that their organizations are continuing to make progress on IT modernization despite hurdles created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and are approaching modernization with data as the centerpiece. […]
A new report from the Partnership for Public Service and Accenture finds that while the Federal government has made progress over the past year in improving customer experience and addressing customer feedback, the Feds still have a ways to go in meeting customer needs. […]
The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning on Oct. 2 to help the public recognize and avoid spoofed election-related internet domains and email accounts during the 2020 election year. […]
The FBI’s Boston Division has issued guidance to help the general public guard against foreign influence and disinformation campaigns in advance of the 2020 election. […]
To harness the power of data science across the Federal government, Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat said that agencies are launching a new subject matter expert hiring initiative alongside the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) data science reskilling program. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a new rule that will expand its insider threat program to cover “the categories of individuals to all individuals who have or had access to the Department’s facilities, information, equipment, networks, or systems.” […]
Lt. Gen. Michael Groen officially took the reins of the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) on October 1. He succeeds JAIC’s first director, Lt. Gen Jack Shanahan, who retired earlier this year after serving as director since the agency began operations in December 2018. […]
For more than two years, Department of Defense (DoD) fourth estate agencies have undertaken the challenging task of migrating more than 100 data centers to milCloud 2.0. With the Fiscal Year 2020 deadline for that migration having passed on September 30, DoD agencies are focused on making sure their migration to milCloud 2.0 is driving toward outcomes that matter. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is suggesting that the U.S. Army improve its use of alternative agreements and approaches for contracts – such as technology competitions and granting access to Army labs – by analyzing how those approaches are working and sharing lessons learned enterprise-wide. […]
The Treasury Department is asking organizations not to pay off malicious actors to terminate ransomware attacks without carefully considering possible national security threats – and said it may implement penalties for organizations that choose to pay ransom to their attackers. […]
The increased shift to telework seems like it is here to stay as employers work to slow the spread of COVID-19 several months into the pandemic, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released new telework tips for leaders, IT professionals, and teleworkers to keep the remote environment secure. […]
Weeks after the Department of Defense (DoD) asked industry for information regarding how the department could “own and operate 5G networks for domestic operations,” several top Republican senators sent a letter to the White House this week urging the President to “remain on the free-market path” in the 5G wireless race. […]
The Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is crowdsourcing for answers on how to apply differential privacy solutions to complex data sets regarding public safety, and is dangling $276,000 in cash prizes to jumpstart the effort. […]
The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today issued a new draft paper to help organizations address ransomware and other data integrity events. […]
The bias and ethics of artificial intelligence application are still being worked out on a case-by-case basis, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) IT Lab Chief of Staff Elham Tabassi said yesterday that an assessment process to minimize harm is not necessarily in the near future. […]
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the American Competitiveness on More Productive Emerging Tech Economy (COMPETE Act) and the Consumer Safety Technology Act (H.R. 8128), both now move to the Senate for consideration. […]
The Library of Congress, which includes millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts in its collections, is seeking a cloud-based approach for interacting with digital collections as data. […]
Three tech-sector veterans, in conjunction with MeriTalk, will cut through the confusion about an important aspect of the new tech environment – the virtual desktop experience – during a virtual tech briefing set for Wednesday, Oct. 14, from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm Eastern time. The complementary briefing will explain how to make the virtual desktop experience productive, efficient, and safe. […]
The House of Representative this week voted to approve a collection of bills that aim to improve cybersecurity in the energy sector, inform the use of emerging technologies, and establish R&D plans. […]
Federal legislation to help strengthen the cybersecurity of state and local governments through a Department of Homeland Security grant program passed the House of Representatives on Sept. 30 – with impetus for the legislation coming from across the U.S. in the form of numerous ransomware and other attacks in recent years. […]
In a discussion about creating more diversity in the field of cybersecurity, Department of Agriculture CISO Venice Goodwine encouraged cyber professionals not to let anyone put them in a box, to invest in themselves, and to be deliberate in their career decisions. […]
A two-part ransomware guide released yesterday by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) directs cyber professionals on how to protect against and respond to attack. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today reported results of its review of Federal agency efforts to reduce IT contracts duplication, and found that four of the seven agencies reviewed had fully or partially taken recommended steps to regularly identify potential contract duplication. […]
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), an industry-backed group dedicated to best practices to ensure secure cloud computing environments, released its list of the top 11 threats to cloud computing. […]
The three biggest linchpins for the Department of State’s successful implementation of telework across the enterprise each involve longer-term IT investments that the agency was able to make prior to the coronavirus pandemic, and each of those investments has paid big dividends in agency performance since March. […]