A report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released Wednesday found that “harnessing the full potential of cyber insurance will be imperative for preventing systemic cyber incidents of concern for governments and the private sector alike.” […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced today that it issued $1,272,320 of funding awards to develop new solutions to “improve the capability of organizations to understand and improve their cybersecurity control investment decisions.” The funding will be split between University of California, San Diego and University of Illinois, Chicago. […]
The demand for cybersecurity professionals is growing, according to data published Wednesday on CyberSeek, a free online resource from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Burning Glass, and CompTIA. […]
The United States is finally making no bones about its willingness to go after adversaries in cyberspace. […]
As Federal government agencies continue their methodical march to IT modernization spurred on by congressional and administration mandates, two senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) IT officials emphasized today the importance of the needs of core agency missions in leading those efforts. […]
New guidance for the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) will likely include revised performance goals for agencies, revised metrics for energy metering and virtualization, and new metrics for under-utilized servers, availability, and old hardware, said Jake Wooley, IT sustainability program manager at the Department of Energy (DoE), during MeriTalk’s 2018 Data Center Brainstorm. […]
On Nov. 5, the United States implemented sanctions against Iran, which the Treasury Department described as the “largest ever single-day action targeting the Iranian regime.” While the sanctions were ostensibly targeting Iran’s growing nuclear program, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank which vacillates between nonpartisan, hawkish, and neoconservative in terms of its political leanings, argued in a report released Tuesday that the United States should be concerned about the cybersecurity implications of the new sanctions. […]
Cybersecurity firm Morphisec said that 63 percent of 1,000 Americans that it surveyed in late October regarded the threat of “adversaries propagating misinformation on social networks” as a “more significant threat” to the U.S. midterm elections than possible cyber attacks against voting infrastructure. […]
The White House is looking to finalize its new Cloud Smart policy following the release of a draft at the end of September. Agencies and other stakeholders have been given just over a month to express how to make improvements to the new policy. […]
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker last Friday requested that Maj. Gen. Donald Dunbar, adjutant general of Wisconsin, put the state’s National Guard cyber response teams on standby ahead of the midterm elections. […]
A majority of surveyed U.S. information and technology professionals–86 percent–are concerned about the public sector’s ability to conduct secure, reliable, and accurate elections, according to a new study from ISACA released today. […]
Vice Admiral Nancy Norton, head of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and commander of the Joint Force Headquarters Department of Defense Information Network (JFHQ-DODIN), today described DISA’s efforts going into milCloud 2.0 and how they support Federal data center optimization goals. […]
Leveraging the cloud is key to the success of new programs and modernization efforts at the Pentagon, said Department of Defense CIO Dana Deasy and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Chief Vice Admiral Nancy Norton during DISA’s Forecast to Industry conference on Monday. […]
TechCongress, a nonpartisan initiative, is using a $1 million investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to “increase government knowledge of emerging technology issues and inform policymaking,” according to a Knight Foundation press release dated Nov. 2. […]
Hybrid clouds can be an integral part of government agencies’ information technology modernization strategies by helping to provide consistency across on-premise and public cloud platforms to ease migration, integration, and operation across the platforms. […]
A new report from the Commerce Department Office of the Inspector General (OIG) determined that the Census Bureau must improve the implementation of its risk management framework. […]
In a memo dated Oct. 24, Secretary of Defense James Mattis established the Protecting Critical Technology Task Force (PCTTF) to protect the Department of Defense’s (DoD) “critical technology.” The task force will work to prevent the loss of classified and controlled unclassified information–the loss of which is “putting the Department’s investments at risk and eroding the lethality and survivability of our forces.” […]
How can the U.S. deter adversaries and impose costs on enemies launching cyberattacks against the country? With new strategies and policies opening up room for more aggressive responses, the best defense just might be a good offense, Federal cybersecurity leaders discussed Thursday. […]
The newest round of Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) awards came after the TMF board reviewed more than 40 proposals from agencies looking to win funds from the program, according to Federal Deputy CIO Margie Graves. […]
The Professional Services Council told Federal CIO Suzette Kent in an Oct. 24 letter in response to the Office of Management and Budget’s request for comments on the 2018 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy that it “supports efforts to build on the 2011 Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, the ‘Cloud First’ policy, to help Federal agencies leverage commercial solutions to provide the best services at best value to the American people.” […]
The International Telecommunication Union–a United Nations agency for information and communications technology–announced the re-election of Houlin Zhao of China as ITU Secretary-General. […]
Freedom House’s annual report on internet freedom, entitled “Freedom on the Net” and released today, finds that global internet freedom is on the decline for the eighth consecutive year. […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is focusing intently on a range of activities to help ensure the security of next week’s mid-term congressional elections, DHS officials said today at an event organized by Fifth Domain. […]
While the National Cyber Strategy released by the Trump administration in September may not include many differences in policy compared to the prior version from 2015, the real change comes in the shift from policy to action, including an implementation plan for the National Cyber Strategy, said Grant Schneider, the Federal government’s chief information security officer, on Thursday. […]
The Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday announced charges against Chinese government intelligence officers Zha Rong and Chai Meng, among others, for conspiring to steal intellectual property, confidential business information, and technological data from companies in the U.S. and European commercial aviation industry. […]
The U.S. Air Force announced Monday that it selected Northrop Grumman for a $54.6 million contract to provide U.S. Cyber Command with a unified platform that manages cybersecurity processes–both offensive and defensive operations. […]
The incidence of ransomware attacks in the U.S. has leveled off since 2017 for a variety of reasons, including improved defenses by targeted organizations that have made such attacks less profitable for perpetrators, experts said Tuesday at the 2018 Symantec Government Symposium. […]
The Defense Department is lending assistance to the Department of Homeland Security as DHS works to protect election infrastructure in the run-up to next week’s mid-term congressional elections, said Ed Wilson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy, on Tuesday at the Symantec 2018 Government Symposium. […]
The Commerce Department will soon be releasing a draft “road map” on Internet of Things (IoT) security issues, an official with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)–which is part of the Commerce Department–indicated Tuesday during a panel discussion at the 2018 Symantec Government Symposium. […]
Cerner, the contractor providing electronic health records systems to both the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, offered an update on Tuesday on those projects and cited some early successes from test implementations. […]