The Biden-Harris transition team announced 21 more appointees to the incoming administration’s National Security Council (NSC) Jan. 8, including two that are sure to play significant roles in cybersecurity policy. The transition team has tapped Tarun Chhabra as Senior Director for Technology and National Security, and Caitlin Durkovich as Senior Director of Resilience and Response. […]
The Federal Communications Commission on Jan. 6 called for comment on how the agency should proceed with deploying $249.9 million of new funding to support its existing COVID-19 Telehealth Program. […]
In the midst of dealing with the fallout from the Russian cyberattack that used SolarWinds software to breach the networks of thousands of the firm’s customers, SolarWinds has hired former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs and his new cybersecurity consulting firm as an independent consultant. […]
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo approved the establishment of the Bureau of Cyberspace Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET) within the Department of State on Thursday to lead diplomatic efforts to deflect cyberattacks from foreign countries. […]
The Department of Commerce Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced last month that it will be conducting a review of the department’s cyber threat data sharing capabilities, pursuant to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 which set up structures for sharing threat data with government and private sector entities. […]
President-elect Joe Biden has chosen cybersecurity veteran Lisa Monaco as his nominee for Deputy Attorney General at the Justice Department (DoJ), and according to a Politico report, is getting ready to name Anne Neuberger deputy national security adviser for cybersecurity on the President’s National Security Council (NSC). […]
The National Security Agency (NSA) issued an “emphatic” call for Federal stakeholders to update older Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols, with the message particularly aimed at system administrators in the Department of Defense (DoD), the intelligence community (IC), and the Defense Industrial Base (DIB). […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) anticipates awarding a contract on behalf of the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) research arm for expert guidance to support DoD’s cloud migration efforts. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a new round of supplemental guidance on Jan. 6 to the emergency directive that the agency issued on Dec. 13, 2020, providing remediation guidance in response to the Russia-backed hack of more than 18,000 government and private sector systems via SolarWinds Orion products. […]
The U.S. Courts released a request for information (RFI) seeking Cloud Management Portal (CMP) products to support both private and commercial cloud hosting providers. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) is updating its repository for enterprise data, which will now be able to support multiple information systems for the DoD’s defense business enterprise. […]
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the research arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has launched a multi-year research effort aimed at expanding wide-area satellite imagery technologies. […]
The Department of Education said it anticipates releasing a solicitation seeking cloud hosting, system administration, and website support and development for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), according to a recent Beta.Sam.gov posting. […]
A new audit report released by the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has found deficiencies in the agency’s IT controls related to cash management and federal debt information systems. […]
The Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is gaining two new supercomputers to upgrade its computing abilities. […]
The Federal Communications Commission is seeking public comment on how to best distribute $3.2 billion of funding approved by Congress late last month as part of combined FY 2021 government funding and COVID-19 relief legislation to help low-income Americans access internet services. […]
Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies said today they believe that “fewer than ten” Federal agencies have been targeted by “follow-on” activity after initial breaches in the Russia-directed hacking of government networks via SolarWinds Orion products. […]
The White House issued the National Maritime Cybersecurity Plan – a plan for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop and deploy a maritime cybersecurity workforce in order to monitor, protect and mitigate cyber threats to the maritime sector. […]
The General Services Administration (GSA) has released a new draft of its Polaris Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) on Dec. 31, 2020 and is seeking feedback from the small business IT community by the end of the month, according to an RFP posted on beta.SAM.gov. […]
After being excluded from the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the 117th Congress made the Federal Risk Assessment and Management Program (FedRAMP) Authorization Act one of the first bills passed in the House, passing by voice vote today. […]
The United States Postal Service (USPS) did not do enough to ensure that some of its main IT contracts were well-managed and remained competitive, bringing spending under the contract into question, according to a report from the USPS Office of Inspector General. […]
The U.S. Army Futures Command (AFC) is in the planning stages of creating a software development wing of the Army that would reduce its reliance on vendor software. AFC put out a call for white papers on Dec. 28 which they will use to invite vendors to submit prototypes and, later, award a contract by March of this year, according to the Federal government’s beta.SAM.gov website. […]
A Treasury Department official told House Ways and Means Committee members in a Dec. 23 letter that the agency has found no evidence that the suspected Russia-backed breach of Federal government systems via SolarWinds Orion products exposed U.S. taxpayer data. […]
With one of the most abnormal years of our lifetimes coming to an end, we look back at the top Fed IT moments of 2020. In a year with both a pandemic and an election, the government had to change the way it worked, ensure trust in election outcomes, and modernize on the fly. […]
With 2020 nearly in the rearview mirror, we surveyed the office to find everyone’s silver linings of the pandemic. From ditching the morning commute to logging more quality time with loved ones, we’ve done our best to make lemonade out of lemons. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) Prototypes and Experiments office is looking for submissions ahead of a solutions meeting that the office expects to hold in late spring 2021, according to a Dec. 22 release. […]
A bill introduced on Dec. 11 by Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, would require Federal agencies to report to Congress within seven days about any cyber attacks they have faced that would cause significant harm to national security or agency operations. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO)has reviewed several Department of Defense (DoD) information technology programs and found that the agency’s IT development approaches and cybersecurity practices may be impacting cost and scheduling. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has outlined technical and policy options for creating database resources that can be used to identify chemical “fingerprints” and help investigators track down the sources of chemical weapon agents used in attacks. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a draft version of Special Publication (SP) 800-213 and several supporting documents aimed at manufacturers, with the goal of establishing a baseline for securely integrating Internet of Things (IoT) devices into Federal networks. […]