Imagine that you’re in charge of an organization with nationwide reach, one that regularly visits the front doorstep of every street address in America, and one that pledges delivery of service under any kind of condition including snow, rain, heat, and “gloom of night.” Today, keeping that promise requires maintaining the highest levels of visibility into IT issues to keep network functions online and manage advanced data analytics. […]

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the first intergovernmental standard on artificial intelligence (AI) on May 22, with its 36 member countries, including the United States, signing off on its principles. […]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to monitor plans of action and milestones (POA&Ms) for cybersecurity weaknesses as required by EPA policy, the agency’s Inspector General (IG) said. […]

The U.S. Air Force’s effort launched last year to hasten digital transformation efforts is well under way and features weekly meetings between Air Force business and IT leaders aimed at addressing key challenges in the campaign, an Air Force official said today. […]

General Services Administration (GSA) Senior Solution Architect Richard Bright hailed several benefits of the agency’s migration to cloud services at the Alfresco Government Summit conference today, including resulting service improvements and an uptick in workforce culture. […]

While artificial intelligence (AI) technology offers significant opportunities to the Federal government to both reduce costs and improve performance, implementation of the technology will require proper policy, budget, and leadership support, according to a May 22 report from the Professional Services Council Foundation (PSCF). […]

Despite near-universal trust in the science of mathematics, human biases can readily creep into data analysis and design of algorithms, leading author and algorithmic auditor Cathy O’Neil to warn that biases baked into algorithms may create sweeping consequences for both individuals and society as a whole.  […]

For the first time, Moody’s has downgraded a company’s credit rating because of a cyberattack. […]

The House Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing May 22 examining the impact of facial recognition technology on citizens’ civil rights and right to privacy. […]

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its cost estimate for the Small Business Administration (SBA) Cyber Awareness Act, H.R. 2331 and S. 772, on May 20, and said the bill would cost nothing to implement. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published a list of best practices for securing election systems on May 21. […]

The Defense Security Service has awarded a $75 million contract to Perspecta through an other transaction agreement (OTA) that will work to add advanced AI to backend systems and modernize the vetting processes of security clearance personnel for the National Background Investigation Service (NBIS). […]

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said today he plans to introduce a bill that would prohibit online service providers from collecting data from consumers “any data that is beyond what is necessary for the companies’ online services.” […]

Use of “shadow IT” – applications, tools, or services that haven’t been approved or secured by an organization’s IT team – has become more ubiquitous across organizations.  But rather than banning the practice, enterprises should find a balance in regulating and allowing it, an ISACA primer released this week said. […]

A bipartisan group of Federal legislators wrote Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats on May 20 urging “greater scrutiny and regulation of private companies providing highly advanced surveillance capabilities to governments with troubling human rights records.” […]

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) still has hackable vulnerabilities in its computer networks, while the Republican National Committee (RNC) performed slightly better than the DNC, but still has gaps to fill, according to a new report. […]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the U.S. Air Force announced an agreement on May 20 to launch a program to advance artificial intelligence (AI) in Air Force operations. […]

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will call for a Federal investigation that examines the potential national security threat of plans to install New York subway cars designed by a Chinese state-owned company. […]

Senior Federal government decision-makers support the government adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and want to accelerate existing efforts to do so, according to a Government Business Council (GBC) report released today. […]

President Trump was a victim of hacking on May 17 when four false scores were posted to Trump’s United States Golf Association-administered Golf Handicap and Information Network (GHIN) system. The scores were middling by golf standards (101, 100, 108 and 102), and deviated from Trump’s typical reported scores which fall in the 70s and 80s. […]

Cyber incidents and data breaches in 2018 were overwhelmingly driven by hopes for financial gain in private-sector and state-sponsored cyber-espionage in public-sector attacks in 2018, Verizon found in its Data Breach Investigations Report released last week. […]

President Donald Trump declared a “national emergency” when he signed an executive order (EO) on May 15 that would grant Federal authority to prohibit the adoption of foreign adversaries’ telecom suppliers. Though the order was signed only a day ago, both legislators and trade groups have already weighed in and the EO has received mostly positive reviews. […]

During the Federal IT Day event at the U.S. Department of Labor, reimaging what it takes to develop a workforce focused on IT and reskilling the current workforce were heavily emphasized in topics of discussion. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced today that it has launched the Cloud Information Center (CIC), which will serve as a central repository for cloud resources. […]

The Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) released a white paper this month that reinforces its suggested practices to bolster cloud security, privacy, and compliance. […]

The City of San Francisco became the first city in the United States to ban law enforcement, as well as other city agencies, from using facial recognition technologies when its Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) is working on a joint data strategy for the service branches within the department, said Michael Conlin, chief data officer at DoD. […]

The U.S. Census Bureau launched a new virtual hub this year that aims to inform citizens how they can make use of the data the bureau collects, said Census Bureau Digital Marketing Lead Anthony Calabrese at the Granicus Annual National Summit today. […]

As government agencies start and continue to migrate to cloud platforms, it is important to adopt multi-cloud environments and back it up with smart use of data, said Department of Agriculture (USDA) Associate CIO Edward Reyelts and Maryland Department of Information Technology (IT) Secretary Michael Leahy. […]

The vast majority of security IT decision makers are willing to share threat intelligence data with the government to help improve decision making when it comes to cyberattacks, according to an IronNet survey release today. […]