Cloud.gov, the Federal government’s cloud platform that offers agencies a fast way to host and update websites and web applications, last month became part of a growing ecosystem where applications and development skills are portable across cloud providers. […]
Today the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a joint Technical Alert (TA) identifying two families of malware–dubbed Joanap and Brambul–used by the North Korean government. […]
Lawmakers hailed a new partnership that will leverage the Department of Energy’s high-performance computing and machine learning capabilities to help analyze the health records of more than 20 million veterans maintained by the Department of Veterans Affairs. […]
As Federal agencies move away from older telecom contract vehicles and transition to the new Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract–completion of which is due by the spring of 2020–a logical place to start is with conducting an inventory of all network devices. This will provide a good look at what type of future network is needed to achieve mission goals and objectives. […]
Members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee voiced support this week for legislation to require greater corporate disclosure of cybersecurity preparedness, and relayed concerns that personally identifiable information (PII) collected by government and private sector entities cannot be adequately safeguarded against theft or loss. […]
The Pentagon wants more hackers to take aim at its systems, launching another program that invites crowdsourced attacks from outside the Department of Defense (DoD) to help it identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in its networks and information systems. […]
IT modernization in the Federal government will require collaboration, effective policies, and a focus on the true end-goal: improving the government experience for citizens, said agency CIOs and industry leaders at a May 23 FedInsider webinar on IT modernization. […]
Federal agencies might not meet the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) data center closure goals, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. Based on current projections, only 7,221 of the 12,062 data centers that agencies reported in August 2017 will be closed by September of this year. […]
Federal government agencies must work on improving mobile device security, as people are increasingly attached to their devices and attackers can wield a variety of new threats that can expose agencies’ passwords, personal information and networks, industry officials said this week. […]
While many Federal agencies focus intensely on cloud migration, one critical (and often overlooked) component of IT modernization is the API [application programming interface], said Pamela Wise-Martinez, chief cloud and enterprise data architect at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), in a MeriTalk webinar “Modernizing the Monolith.” […]
Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent said Thursday at IBM’s Think Gov event in Washington that the Federal government must reframe its thinking on emerging technology to remain a world leader in technology innovation. […]
Industry leaders and business advocates in the ever-expanding Internet of Things (IoT) sector said Tuesday they support the aims of new draft legislation in the House directing the Secretary of Commerce to undertake comprehensive research on the IoT industry with an eye toward regulating it. […]
It’s not exactly the heist of the century, but the FDIC has stirred up a bit of controversy. Departing FDIC employees downloaded their family photos, personal emails, and the sensitive data of over 100,000 bank customers–oops. Instead of reporting to Congress, the agency stayed mum for months. This earned the agency a strict chiding from their IG in the form of a special inquiry issued on April 16. Fa […]
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee raised a few eyebrows recently when he put forth draft legislation dated April 16 and aimed at cutting defense spending by eliminating seven Department of Defense (DoD) agencies, including the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). […]
The flagship model for organizational cybersecurity policies just got a new coat of paint. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on April 16 released version 1.1 of its Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity , which updates the agency’s original voluntary cybersecurity framework for critical infrastructure sectors issued in 2014. […]
Lawmakers learned in April that the United States needs to write the script when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). Leave this one to improvisation and we may have a tragedy on our hands. […]
Because spending plans make for informative policy documents, an April markup of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) offers an outline of the Department of Defense’s plans for its cyber operations and the development of new technologies. […]
A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) this week raises concerns that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) isn’t properly protecting its IT systems. The agency spends about $1.5 billion annually on IT investments to support its missions. […]
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation today approved S. 2418, the Rural Reasonable and Comparable Wireless Access Act of 2018. […]
A challenge many Federal managers face as they embark on IT modernization initiatives is how to identify and strategically prioritize systems for IT modernization in a way that helps them further their mission. […]
As part of its accelerated push toward commercial cloud services, the Defense Department has ordered more than 100 data centers in what DoD calls its “Fourth Estate” agencies to migrate their applications to milCloud 2.0, a commercially run cloud hosted by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). […]
Artificial Intelligence systems are known for getting results with compute-intensive analytics involving huge data sets and a lot of processing power. But it turns out they also can help users do more with less. […]
An official with data storage technologies provider Pure Storage told MeriTalk that issues holding back Federal government adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies include the high cost of super-computing resources and the continued reliance of government agencies on legacy IT systems that were not created with AI applications in mind. […]
Advances in hybrid cloud environments and specialized vendor offerings in the space have led to a dramatic shift in the way Federal agencies are planning and executing their cloud migration agendas, according to a private sector leader and government official involved in Federal cloud procurements. […]
The House Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection met today to discuss the emerging field of quantum computing, and how the still-nascent sector requires more attention in terms of funding and human capital. […]
The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced today that a Federal jury convicted Ruslans Bondars, a resident of Latvia, on three counts related to his operation of “Scan4you,” an online counter-antivirus service. […]
The White House’s planned advisory committee on artificial intelligence may or may not help keep the country at the forefront of technological innovation, but it is another sign that the government is getting more serious about the importance of AI and the potential threats of falling behind in the “AI arms race.” […]
The Federal government has a massive data center footprint: 6.76 million square feet, to be precise. Of its total portfolio, an astonishing 62 percent of all floor center space goes unused. To add insult to injury, it’s extremely expensive to maintain all that unused space. […]
Immediately following National Security Advisor John Bolton’s decision to eliminate the post of one of the President’s top cybersecurity advisors, lawmakers pushed back with legislation aimed at reinstating the position and requiring Senate confirmation for it under a newly established National Office for Cyberspace. […]
Federal data center teams will have a new member suiting up this summer to help drive efficiency and optimization. And this team member doesn’t take vacations or lunch breaks. […]