The Defense Department (DoD) is investing $600 million along with the work of more than 1,000 people in its effort to develop vaccines and treatments for the COVID-19 coronavirus, a DoD official said April 7. […]
The Small Business Administration (SBA) is in the process of notifying small business applicants impacted by an exposure of personally identifiable information (PII) in connection with their its Economic Injury Disaster Loan applications. […]
As schools have closed down across the country to combat the spread of COVID-19, students are increasingly needing broadband access to take part in digital learning. However, there are still wide swaths of the country – much of it rural – that lack access to broadband. […]
In an agencywide memo, NASA CIO Renee Wynn warned that cyber threats have significantly increased during the Coronavirus pandemic. […]
Department of Defense (DoD) CIO Dana Deasy is leading a Telework Readiness Task Force to ease the agency’s transition to telework and improve cybersecurity, DoD spokesman Lt. Col. Robert Carver confirmed to MeriTalk. […]
In a Dear Colleague letter to House members, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told members that the House is taking additional action to limit physical presence in the Capitol by formalizing electronic submissions for floor documents. “Beginning [today], staff must electronically submit all Floor documents – including bills, resolutions, co-sponsors and extensions of remarks – to […]
It’s Day 21 of quarantine (but who’s counting?), and now that we’re about 1,000 Zoom meetings in, we’ve noticed that grooming habits in our Fed IT community have, shall we say, evolved… […]
FBI Issues PSA on Cyber Threats due to COVID-19 According to a Public Service Announcement (PSA) by the FBI, cyber threat actors are attempting to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic by exploiting virtual environments. “As of March 30, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has received and reviewed more than 1,200 complaints related […]
In an April 3 letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Democratic senators are questioning the data privacy of the company’s COVID-19 coronavirus screening website despite Apple’s promises not to collect identifying health information. […]
Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., asked Zoom Communications CEO Eric Yuan in an April 6 letter for a detailed accounting of the company’s security and privacy practices following numerous press reports of security complaints about the company’s teleconference services. […]
In the modern era of IT security, few have seen as much – and done more to make it secure – than Bill Rucker, president of Trustwave Government Solutions. In the midst of a 20-year stretch in the public sector market that began with Intellitactics prior to its acquisition by Trustwave, Rucker leads the company’s effort to help government fight cybercrime, protect data, and reduce security risk. […]
The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (AI) is calling for a national research cloud led by the Federal government to fuel innovation and collaboration between academia, the public sector, and industry. […]
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggests that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) update its Baseline Assessment for Security Enhancement (BASE) cybersecurity template to reflect key cybersecurity practices. […]
Here’s an overview of some of the latest developments on the government and tech fronts due to COVID-19: […]
As the COVID-19 coronavirus spreads throughout the United States, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the most up-to-date news on the pandemic. […]
The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) voted in favor of adopting a $200 million telehealth program, as appropriated by the CARES Act, to help healthcare providers purchase telecommunications devices and broadband connectivity. […]
The Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA) says that those involved in developing wireless, Internet of Things, 5G, and other compute-rich networks are at security and economic risk and that the solution is global supply chain security standards and programs that are industry driven. […]
As efforts to control the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic have increased, the Federal government has moved the majority of its workers to telework. While this is a great step to enable social distancing, it does open up serious cybersecurity concerns. […]
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and American Telemedicine Association (ATA) have launched TechHealthDirectory.com in response to U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios’ challenge to the tech community to support the nationwide response to COVID-19. […]
Here’s an overview of some of the latest COVID-19 coronavirus developments on the government and tech fronts: […]
As the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program prepares for minimum viable product launch for agency dashboards in April 2020 and gears up to deliver the minimum viable Federal dashboard later this year, the project is undergoing major updates to improve user experience. […]
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), in a just-issued human capital review (HCR) report covering 2019, emphasized hiring and retention obstacles for employees in STEM fields, and how to strategically develop the workforce and close the skills gap. […]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking comments on Draft Special Publication (SP) 800-210 which will help in understanding security challenges in cloud-based systems. […]
A recent MeriTalk research report found that 86 percent of Department of Defense (DoD) mission partners believe migrating to milCloud® 2.0 will have a positive impact on DoD missions, but resource constraints and lack of clarity are holding agencies back from making the transition. On a recent webinar discussion, Jeffrey Phelan, cloud services portfolio lead for milCloud® 2.0 at GDIT, said that DISA and DoD OCIO are stepping in to mitigate. […]
The Air Force Foundation (AFA) announced the release of its new children’s book – Ben the Cyber Defender. […]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) posted a job opening for a new chief data officer (CDO) yesterday as a part of its efforts to fulfill key roles in its response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]
In an estimate released March 31, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that over the next five years the Cybersecurity State Coordinator Act would cost $37 million to enact. […]
U.S. Army and industry researchers have developed a metric for neural networks that will measure next generation AI and machine learning (ML) algorithms’ reliability. […]
The Colorado National Guard is ramping up its cybersecurity awareness, starting with a cultural change to normalize cyber practices and the introduction of a cyber mascot, CIO Col. Isaac Martinez shared at a March 31 Cybersmart webinar. […]
One of the relatively few positive things about the last few weeks is how the Internet has been working well enough to accommodate tens of millions of new work-from-homers, students stuck at home, and everyone else as the pandemic sustains the imperative to work and interact online. […]