As Federal agencies migrate applications to the cloud, data integration can be a major stumbling block that prevents them from reaping the benefits of cloud services. While agencies are putting more applications in cloud environments, often the underlying technologies connecting these applications are still on-premise. As a result, information technology teams must spend time provisioning and maintaining their middleware infrastructure to avoid performance bottlenecks. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) today announced that it awarded a $2 million contract to HackerOne for the facilitation of GSA’s bug bounty programs. […]

Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., has introduced a consumer data privacy bill that would require online service providers to provide “opt-in” rights to consumers whose “sensitive personal information or behavioral data” they collect, store, process, sell, or share with third parties. […]

The National Cyber Strategy policy document released by the White House late Thursday tracks in tone and wording with the tough stance adopted in the Defense Department’s cyber strategy announced earlier this week–including its adoption of a more offensive-minded position than previous written policies–and appears to respond in tone to demands from across the political spectrum that the U.S. fashion policy that will do a better job in creating a deterrence effect against adversaries. […]

The Federal government is continuing its push to update the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative to provide “improved solutions for accessing cloud services while maintaining cybersecurity,” according to the latest progress updates to the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). […]

The general election in 2016 was a watershed moment for Federal, state, and local election officials. […]

As the FCC prepares to vote next week on an order that would make it easier for wireless service providers to deploy small wireless antennas and other infrastructure to speed the deployment of fifth-generation–or 5G–services, two of the agency’s five commissioners discussed the pros and cons of taking that course at an event organized by Politico. […]

The Office of Management and Budget recently released its Q3 FY 2018 progress update to the President’s Management Agenda’s cross-agency priority (CAP) goals, and for CAP goal No. 1, IT Modernization, it appears that there has been a notable progression on cloud adoption in the Federal government. […]

According to a new study prepared for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the agency’s development of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) has created an estimated $250 billion in economic impact over the last 20 years. […]

Small drones have been a useful tool to the military for years, primarily as a way to provide on-the-spot surveillance. But as hardware and artificial intelligence guidance systems continue to improve, macro- and nano-drones are poised to begin playing a bigger role in contested areas as both friend and foe. […]

The U.S. Navy is now using artificial intelligence to determine when it needs to take birds out of the air and repair their wings before they get clipped. […]

Jane Wiseman, senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, has authored a new report–published Tuesday by the IBM Center for the Business of Government–that finds an apparent lack of chief data officers (CDO) among Federal agencies. […]

Current and former Department of Defense (DoD) officials discussed the benefits of using cloud and modernizing their legacy equipment to help accomplish their mission. […]

Federal, state, and local government IT leaders are preparing to share their own hard-won experiences about planning for and executing broad IT modernization and cloud adoption strategies at the Infor Government Forum in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 25. […]

The Pentagon’s geospatial intelligence analysts, who have admitted in the past that they have more data than they can properly analyze, are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to automate and refine how they sift through massive amounts of imagery from satellites and other sources. […]

Researchers at cybersecurity firm Tenable published an advisory Monday revealing a software vulnerability affecting a popular brand of surveillance cameras, whcih could be exploited to gain access to video feeds and potentially “allow attackers to remotely view feeds and tamper with recordings.” […]

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, today introduced the Advancing Cybersecurity Diagnostics and Mitigation Act in the Senate. The House version of the bill (HR 6443), sponsored by Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, passed the House earlier this month. […]

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen today swore in eight new members to the the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC): Jayson P. Ahern, Stewart A. Baker, Frank J. Cilluffo, Mark J. Dannels, Carol DiBattiste, Cathy Lanier, Wendy Smith-Reeve, and Chad Sweet. […]

With the 2018 midterm elections less than 50 days away, Symantec is joining the chorus with several other cybersecurity companies by offering free election security measures. […]

Stacey Dixon, director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), said today at an event organized by Defense One that some of the intelligence community’s more audacious research centers on using machines to predict the future–through more accurate forecasts of geopolitical events. Dixon also said IARPA research aims to translate neuroscience to neural networks, hoping that efforts to map the human brain can lead to massive strides in machine learning. […]

Retired Gen. William Bender, who was Air Force CIO from 2014 until 2017, said on Thursday that while the pace of IT modernization across the services may be somewhat uneven, the military is making progress toward its modernization goals. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology today released a new draft publication that takes a deep dive into the issue of trust: how can we trust that the products creeping into every aspect of our day-to-day lives are secure, safe, respect user privacy, and are ultimately tools we can depend on? […]

According to a survey from ProPublica, more than one-third of 27 counties situated in House districts rated as toss-ups in the 2018 mid-term election are not using multi-factor authentication, leaving their systems vulnerable to attack. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) is warning users “to remain vigilant for malicious cyber activity seeking to exploit interest in Hurricane Florence.” Alongside these recommendations, the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) released a cyber intel advisory on Sept. 14, which notes an uptick in internet activity related to Florence. […]

The House on Thursday approved by voice vote H.R.6227, the National Quantum Initiative Act, which would coordinate a Federal program to accelerate quantum research and development “for the economic and national security” of the United States. […]

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.” […]