The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T) today announced awards to five research organizations as part of a new program aimed at identifying network and internet disruptions that could “significantly impact critical infrastructure systems” and “other essential systems on which society is dependent.” […]

Federal cloud services contracts are projected to hit $6.5 billion in fiscal year 2018, an increase of 32 percent over FY2017, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Government. […]

Federal IT executives from the Department of Energy and the United States Digital Service shared their experiences this week with cloud migrations and offered their lessons learned to help ease transitions to the cloud for other agencies, including the evaluation of cost structures and the importance of engineering “quick wins” from service transitions. […]

CyberWarCon is seeking speakers for its Nov. 28 conference in Arlington, Va., dealing with cyber attacks and information operations threats with cyber components. […]

President Trump today issued an Executive Order that creates a structure to evaluate whether any foreign actors are attempting to influence U.S. elections and authorizes the government to impose “appropriate and meaningful sanctions against foreign individuals and entities determined to have engaged in election interference.” […]

Apple later this year will launch an online portal for law enforcement officials to submit “lawful request for data, track outstanding requests, and obtain responsive data” from the tech company. […]

In the quest to keep the upper hand in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI), the Pentagon’s top research arm just put $2 billion in chips on the table to spur development of the third wave of AI technologies. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General recommended in a new report that the Food and Drug Administration pay even more attention to medical device cybersecurity during the process in which it evaluates products for approval to market in the U.S. […]

Tech giants including Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, Cisco, Dell, and VMware are calling on the United States and other governments to invest in defensive, rather than offensive, cyber technologies. […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) announced yesterday the 20 small businesses that will be part of the agency’s ENCORE III Small Business Set-Aside Suite. […]

Federal CIO Suzette Kent said today at an event hosted by the Professional Services Council that the Federal government is currently seeing a “nexus of three critical elements” that provides an unprecedented opportunity for innovation in IT. […]

Andrei Tyurin, a Russian citizen, was extradited to the United States on Friday from the country of Georgia in connection with his alleged participation in a computer hacking campaign that targeted U.S. financial institutions, brokerage firms, financial news publishers, and other American companies, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. […]

A bill introduced by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, on Sept. 7 aims to create a national standard for financial institutions to notify consumers of data security breaches. […]

A new GAO report details how Equifax submitted to audits from agencies with which the company had contracts, but declined an offer of help from the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the company’s 2017 data breach that exposed sensitive personal information of 143 million Americans. […]

Airport and private sector cybersecurity officials warned House members on Thursday of persistent cyber threats to the aviation sector, with two witnesses saying they regard such threats as the most dangerous that the industry faces currently. […]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) kicked off its new ‘AI Next’ campaign with a multi-year commitment to spend more than $2 billion on new and existing artificial intelligence programs to help create machines that can adapt to changing situations. […]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday released its set of legislative recommendations for Congress to consider if and when it tackles data privacy issues, and placed maximum emphasis on the ideas that “sensitive personal information” of individuals deserve the highest level of protection, and that state data privacy statutes should be preempted by new federal law. […]

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is the latest in a string of organizations to release its recommendations on how Federal, state, and local officials can best secure U.S. elections, including the use of paper-ballot components. […]

The House on Wednesday passed a bill that would direct the Secretary of State to sanction and publish the names of foreign actors that have launched cyber attacks on the United States. H.R. 5576, the Cyber Deterrence and Response Act of 2018, passed the House on a voice vote. […]

Defense Department CIO Dana Deasy declined to comment today on DoD’s extension earlier this week of the deadline on the Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) cloud contract from September 17 to October 9. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today released an updated version of a report it issued in July detailing major cybersecurity challenges facing the Federal government and critical actions needed to address them. […]

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and FirstNet today announced new personnel changes. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) said today it charged Park Jin Hyok, a North Korean citizen and computer programmer, for conspiring in several high-profile cyber attacks including the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures, the 2018 WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attacks, and the 2016 theft of $81 million from Bangladesh Bank. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is focused on modernizing its mindset to tackle a host of pressing issues including reducing its reliance on legacy systems, competing to attract cybersecurity talent, and combating supply chain threats, said DHS CIO Dr. John Zangardi today at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit. […]

The FBI wants to use artificial intelligence to add a new layer to its Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, specifically to counteract the increasingly common practice of criminals altering their fingerprints. […]

The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee today voiced some interest in considering Federal government regulation of social media companies and their services, but offered no concrete steps on how to do so. […]

Browser maker Mozilla has named Alan Davidson vice president of global policy, trust, and security. He was director of Digital Economy at the Department of Commerce from 2015 to 2017. […]

Karen Evans was sworn in Tuesday as assistant secretary of Energy for Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER)–a newly created position at the agency, after the Senate confirmed her nomination last week. […]

A cybersecurity exercise hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) revealed complications that can arise in the response to an attack on critical infrastructure including challenges in establishing authority among multiple agencies and levels of government. […]

Bob Kolasky, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) recently created National Risk Management Center (NRMC), said today that DHS is taking action this month to boost the level of communication and data exchange among state and local election officials in the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections in November. […]