The Federal government and other entities are adjusting to and planning for the impact of the spreading COVID-19 coronavirus. Here’s a quick look at some of the top developments of interest to the Federal IT community: […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 18 waived gift rules for its Rural Health Care (RHC) and E-Rate programs to allow broadband service providers to support telehealth and remote learning capabilities during the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. […]
Nathan McGuirt started working in the cloud about ten years ago. Now, a senior solutions architect at Amazon Web Services, McGuirt can testify that a lot in the space has changed. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a bulletin note from the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) on cybersecurity risks increasing with remotely accessible telework networks. […]
The Professional Services Council (PSC), a trade group representing the Federal contractor community, today called on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue “clear and comprehensive government-wide guidance” to provide maximum telework flexibilities for contactors. […]
As Federal agencies increasingly move to telework due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Federal IT leaders across the government agreed that communication is a key building block for successful teleworking. The panelists specifically zeroed in on the importance of maintaining a strong cybersecurity posture even as employees begin to conduct work on their own network and potentially expose the agency to more cyberattacks. […]
In a letter to Federal CTO Michael Kratsios, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., questioned the Federal government’s plan to use American’s smartphone location data to fight COVID-19. […]
The U.S. Army is seeing success in implementing machine learning (ML)— evidenced by improved classification of previously unknown data by 20 percent— and is developing a workforce culture where artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is possible. […]
The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) and 10 private sector and academia technology partners are collaborating on the Securing Telehealth Remote Patient Monitoring Ecosystem Project. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) needs to better consider information collected on non-citizen family members apprehended at the southwestern U.S. border and develop unique identifiers to be shared across DHS component agency data systems to better link family members together, government watchdog said. […]
As more healthcare providers pivot to telehealth appointments to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will let providers use tech that may not be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to communicate with patients. […]
Despite some progress on its enterprise wide cloud strategy, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) struggles with legacy IT that prevents it from collecting billions in tax revenue, according to the Treasury Department Inspector General (IG). […]
A follow-up audit by the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Inspector General (OIG) on corrective actions taken by DoD regarding its Cyber Red Team found that it did not consistently mitigate or include unmitigated vulnerabilities identified in the prior audit or during this audit. […]
In September 2019, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its Zero Trust Architecture draft, setting the tone for the future of Federal cybersecurity and a move toward enterprise-wide zero trust implementation. […]
Originally scheduled as a panel discussion at South by Southwest, three representatives from government agencies shared their work transforming data collections for greater use and benefit. […]
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of 16 senators pushed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai to temporarily allow schools to use the E-Rate program funding to provide Wi-Fi hotspots or devices with Wi-Fi capability to students who lack internet access at home. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified five challenges to facilitate the growth and implementation of 5G wireless networks in the Federal government. […]
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) received extensive, machine readable coronavirus data and is now asking artificial intelligence (AI) experts to accelerate answers to high-priority COVID-19 questions from the science community. […]
Public sector organization can’t bet on luck when it comes to the cloud, but smart helps – specifically OMB’s Cloud Smart policy, according to MeriTalk’s newly released “Smart > Lucky: Pillars to Fed and SLED Cloud Success” report. […]
The Federal government and other entities are adjusting to and planning for the impact of the spreading COVID-19 coronavirus. […]
With COVID-19 dominating the national conversation, there has been growing discussion about how to reduce crowds and lines at polling places during the 2020 election cycle. One possibility is to enable voting via smartphones. However, cybersecurity experts remain incredibly cautious given security concerns. […]
Following reports of a possible cyberattack late Sunday night, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and at the Department of Defense (DoD) prep Federal networks for an uptick in cyberthreats as employees move to telework to fight the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. […]
Verily Life Sciences plans to begin offering online COVID-19 coronavirus screening and information services to parts of the San Francisco area today, separate from virus information site efforts by its sister company Google. […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a reminder today of security considerations regarding the use of virtual private network (VPN) solutions as telework ramps up due to spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. […]
The director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and government scientists from countries around the world are calling for publishers to make COVID-19-related research available to the public including in formats where they can apply artificial intelligence (AI) to the task of analyzing the data. […]
Despite tech and efficiency benefits, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) – which oversees Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the 11 Federal Home Loan Banks – documented “third-party, information security, and business resiliency risks” in its transition to and use of the public cloud. […]
President Donald Trump signed the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, solidifying $1 billion in funding for smaller telecommunications providers to rip out and replace equipment from Chinese firms, such as Huawei and ZTE. […]
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) today released a toolkit broadcasters can use in their response to COVID-19. […]
Sen. Mark Warner sent a letter to the acting director of national intelligence (DNI) and the director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to issue clear guidance ensuring that security clearances will not be jeopardized due to financial impacts of COVID-19. […]
Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., said today they introduced legislation that would ban the use of the TikTok app on Federal government-provided devices out of concern that the company providing the service – ByteDance – has close ties to the Chinese government and could be compelled to share user data with the government. […]