Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy
AI Quantum Computing

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. […]

FDA website

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. […]

Cybersecurity cyber
US Federal CIO Suzette Kent OMB MeriTalk CCXB

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. […]

Russia U.S. Hacking

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. […]

Capital, House of Representatives, Congress, Senate
Equifax Breach Cyber

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. […]

Look at that plane taking off at an airport.
Military AI

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. […]

Privacy issues

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. […]

election voting

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. […]

Congress Capitol Senate House

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. […]

Federal Cloud Flag

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. […]

Cybersecurity flag

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. […]

FirstNet
DOJ Department of Justice

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. […]

Department of Homeland Security DHS

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. […]

social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn

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. […]

Cyber America Connected Internet of things

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

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. […]

Election security, voting, midterms 2018

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. […]

John Ratcliffe

The House of Representatives today approved by voice vote HR 6443, the Advancing Cybersecurity Diagnostics and Mitigation Act, which would codify the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program into law. […]

army fitness apps

On Friday, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Operations Center (OC) cancelled its request for information (RFI) seeking industry assistance with the development and planning of MilCloud2 Rapid Cloud Migration. […]

army fitness apps

The Department of Defense has extended the deadline on the Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) cloud contract from September 17 to October 9. […]

California Gov. Jerry Brown

California’s state Senate pushed the Golden State one step closer to enacting the Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the FCC earlier this year. On Friday the state Senate passed the controversial bill, called SB 822, in a vote of 27-12 that was largely along party lines. […]

Internet of Things IoT Data Architecture diagram

Since the Internet of Things (IoT) is a living, growing, evolving web of networks, organizations need a data architecture that can constantly adapt to its dynamic nature. For government agencies, that also means building a “holistic” data architecture that can accommodate both real-time streaming data and data stored in traditional enterprise databases, industry experts say. […]

Net Neutrality

California’s state Assembly is attempting to turn back time on net neutrality by voting yesterday to approve a controversial bill that brings the state closer to enacting the Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the FCC earlier this year. […]

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