Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology

The Army Futures Command (AFC) is ready to start working on modernizing the U.S. Army. As MeriTalk reported last month, the new AFC is headquartered in Austin. John Murray, who will lead the new command, was promoted to four-star general last Friday at a ceremony in Austin, following Senate confirmation of the promotion early last week. […]

Kirstjen Nielsen DHS

Members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct biennial reviews and provide dedicated funding to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program after finding erratic contracts and little planning documentation. The request was made via a letter to DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday. […]

James Mattis Defense Secretary DoD

Defense Secretary James Mattis in May urged President Trump to create a “whole of country” national strategy to advance U.S. development of artificial intelligence technologies, shortly after the White House’s announcement on May 10 of a new AI advisory committee–the Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence–to advise the White House on research and development efforts across government and industry. […]

Cybersecurity flag

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Facebook, and Microsoft hosted a joint briefing on Friday, Aug. 24, for the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) regarding “actions being taken to combat malicious interference operations.” […]

Military AI DoD Defense

As the Pentagon rushes headlong into putting artificial intelligence into more of its operations, analyses, and weapons, it has said it doesn’t want to ignore caution flags about putting too much faith in the power of machines. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wants to help with that, posting an array of those flags in a white paper that offers guidance to military use of AI and includes of list of its shortcomings and where it can go wrong. […]

Cybersecurity cyber

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) previewed the results of its biannual state CISO survey during a webinar on Tuesday, revealing the continued growth of cybersecurity staff among the states, and continuing resource challenges. […]

NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is seeking comments on a draft practice guide that explores how multifactor authentication can help reduce fraudulent online purchases. […]

Jay Huie

On the heels of Kelly Olson’s promotion to head the General Services Administration’s Technology and Transformation Services (TTS) organization (LINK to yesterday’s story), the agency is setting into motion a series of leadership changes impacting its FedRAMP operation, among others. […]

The former chief security officer at Facebook urged in a column published today on the “Lawfare” blog that the U.S. consider creating an independent, “defense-only” cybersecurity agency to deal with defense of election systems and processes that may come under attack by adversaries. […]

military healthcare, veterans healthcare
AI Quantum Computing

Jonathan Dowling, co-director of the Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics at Louisiana State University, said today at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Army Science and Technology Symposium that conservative estimates put the world’s first universal quantum computer at about a decade away from becoming a reality. […]

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) move to the cloud is fueled by the agency’s desire to improve interoperability and adopt emerging technologies, according to officials speaking during yesterday’s MeriTalk webinar. On the webinar, which was underwritten by AWS and Red Hat, Stephen Moon, senior solutions architect, DoD at Amazon Web Services, and Ted Brunell, chief architect, DoD at Red Hat discussed why cloud is mission-critical and how DoD sees it shaping the future. […]

Army DoD military Defense AI

Brian Sadler, senior scientist for intelligent systems at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, today discussed how the expanse of artificial intelligence (AI) research activities across the Army is bringing to light even greater challenges. […]

Federal government, cloud computing

The Federal government’s “Cloud First” strategy didn’t get quite the results the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was looking for the first time, so now OMB is about to unveil “Cloud Smart,” which updates the seven-year-old strategy with an eye toward energizing agencies that have lagged in making the transition. […]

IoT Connected Devices Internet of Things

Wireless communications industry trade group CTIA said this week it launched its cybersecurity certification program for cellular-connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices. […]

Capital, House of Representatives, Congress, Senate

With just 75 days to go until the 2018 midterm elections and amid mounting pressure for legislative action to boost election security, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration postponed today’s scheduled business meeting on the Secure Elections Act, which would help state and local governments apply for Federal grants to modernize their election systems and receive relevant cyber threat information. […]

La'Naia Jones Deputy IC CIO ODNI Director of National Intelligence

La’Naia Jones, Deputy CIO of the Intelligence Community, said today that the commoditization of hacking capabilities, expansion of IT supply chain exploits, and nation-state use of ransomware have come to the attention of the IC as primary areas of interest in the fight for better cybersecurity. […]

Election security, voting, midterms 2018
Mark Kneidinger DHS Homeland Security NPPD Federal Network Resilience Division Director Office of Cybersecurity & Communications CS&C

The Department of Homeland Security is working with multiple Federal agencies to develop a new “risk radar” that will help agencies’ top executives contextualize cybersecurity risk and clarify where they need to apply focus and resources, according to Mark Kneidinger, director of the Federal Network Resilience division of DHS’ Office of Cybersecurity and Communications (CS&C). […]

Microsoft Corp. said late Monday that its Digital Crimes Unit seized – with the approval of a special master appointed by a federal court – six internet domains created by Strontium, a hacker organization associated with the Russian government. […]

Research firm Gartner has released its 2018 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report, which found technologies like artificial intelligence platform as a service, blockchain for data security, and quantum computing reaching the peak of inflated expectations, while technologies such as mixed reality, and blockchain were on the downswing of excitement. […]

Federal agencies are looking to gain actionable intelligence and information from disparate data sources in a secure, scalable, and efficient manner. An emerging technology known as a big data fabric could provide those agencies with a unified platform “that accelerates insights by automating ingestion, curation, discovery, preparation, and integration from data silos,” according to Forrester Research. […]

g20 flag argentina

A collection of tech-sector trade groups including the Internet Association and Digital Europe is urging leaders from the world’s top 20 economic powers to focus on policies that encourage broadband deployment and adoption, and job skills training for the digital workforce when the G20’s Digital Economy Task Force meets next week in Argentina. […]

Department of Homeland Security DHS

The Department of Homeland Security today released a request for information (RFI) calling on the private sector to provide DHS with information on strategies and tools to augment its cyber supply chain risk management program. […]

military dod army AI innovation cyber command

The Defense Department is pushing full speed ahead on modernization efforts, with recent strides made on a $28 billion R&D project, a $10 billion cloud infrastructure proposed contract, efforts to move cyber defense infrastructure to the cloud, along with myriad advanced research and futuristic projects. They’re even working to overhaul their travel planning system. Call it AirDoD, perhaps? […]

Election security, voting, midterms 2018

The Secure Elections Act, S. 2593, which is expected to be marked up by the Senate Rules Committee later this month, has been freshly amended to require states to have a cyber response and communication plan in place as a precondition to receiving Federal grants to support election security and election technology modernization. […]

Here is a map of the states. Well, at least 48 of the 50 states.

A new report from The Century Foundation, a progressive think-tank, urges state law enforcement officials to take action on data privacy regulations in the absence of any substantial movement in that direction by the Federal government. […]

hybrid cloud multi cloud computing in the cloud

Pamela Wise-Martinez, chief cloud and enterprise data architect at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, discussed the opportunities for Federal agencies to shift from disparate multi-cloud environments to effective use of hybrid cloud – marrying together on-prem, private, and public cloud use. […]

Lisa Murkowski

While members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee today appeared to be generally positive toward the nomination of Lane Genatowski to be the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the Department of Energy, they also had some sharp questions for the nominee over his stated support for President Trumps’ plan to get rid of the organization.   […]

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