The National Association of State Chief Information Officers issued a “planning guide” to help states deal with a cyber disruption. Cyber disruption response planning is essential, the report said: “Ignore at your own peril.” […]

Cyber criminal attack groups have increased their skills, staff, and resources in the past year, making their capabilities close to those of nation-state attackers, according to Symantec’s 2016 Internet Security Threat Report . It provides an overview and analysis of the past year in global threat activity, including emerging trends in attacks, malicious code activity, phishing, and spam. […]

Dave Powner, director of IT issues at the Government Accountability Office, profiled the upcoming agency scorecard on FITARA and discussed the Federal government’s continuing difficulties with data center consolidation and legacy IT modernization. […]

Internal Revenue Service cybersecurity is woefully inadequate, and Congress is to blame, according to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “Congress has sat back and watched while criminals have come in and preyed on taxpayers,” Wyden said at a Senate Finance Committee hearing. […]

The General Services Administration is pushing Congress to get behind a plan to establish a third service branch, known as the Technology Transformation Service, that would be centered around GSA’s 18F digital service organization and would actively help manage the $3.1 billion IT modernization fund proposed by the White House, MeriTalk has learned. […]

Kryptowire, a company that assesses the security of Android and iOS mobile applications, will be available to Federal agencies as a resource for vetting their mobile applications. […]

The Government Accountability Office released a report detailing the 10 key practices agencies should follow in creating service level agreements (SLA) with cloud service providers. […]

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence plans to hire its first chief information officer to take charge of IT programs across the ODNI’s 20 component offices, particularly the effort to retire legacy IT systems and migrate users to the cloud. […]

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is considering recommendations for a major reorganization of the Defense Department that would make U.S. Cyber Command a full combatant command similar to the U.S. European Command or the U.S. Special Operations Command. […]

Cyber Command’s influence may not be as expansive as some think, according to its commander, Adm. Michael Rogers. “The Department of Defense is not resourced, nor is it tasked with defending every single computer structure in the U.S.,” he said. […]

Government officials and industry leaders will try to get to the bottom of why interoperability has been so difficult to achieve, they said at the second meeting of the Joint Health IT Policy and Standards Committee Meeting Interoperability Experience Task Force. […]

The Federal Communications Commission announced new consumer broadband labels designed to give consumers better information about the price, service, and terms of different broadband services. The FCC receives more than 2,000 complaints a year about surprise Internet fees. […]

HID security card readers have a potentially disastrous vulnerability in their access control panels, according to Steve Povolny, senior manager for TippingPoint DVLabs at Trend Micro. TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative team discovered the vulnerability, and warns that the system could present a real security threat, as many are located in hospitals, airports, and government offices. […]

The U.S. Small Business Administration is teaming up with major technology companies to form the Small Business Technology Coalition, which is designed to connect small businesses with technology platforms and training. The coalition will include Amazon, Box, Facebook, LegalZoom, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Zenefits. […]

For FITARA to reach its full potential, Federal agencies must dissect the real problems and attract stronger CIOs, Dave Powner, Director of IT Issues at the Government Accountability Office, told MeriTalk’s FITARA Forum in Washington, D.C. […]

Despite information security progress, the IRS still has deficiencies in controls over taxpayer data, according to a GAO study that found insufficient controls in identity authentication, server access, encryption of authentication data, auditing systems to ensure compliance with agency policies, and access to restricted areas. […]

Just 11 percent of Federal IT managers say their data centers are fully equipped to meet their agency’s current mission demands, according to a report by MeriTalk. The report, titled “Flash Forward–The Future of the Federal Data Center” and underwritten by Pure Storage, asked 150 Federal IT/data center professionals to predict and examine the future […]

Two months after a cloud industry advocacy group published a scathing assessment of the Federal government’s cloud computing security certification process and took their concerns to Capitol Hill, the General Services Administration’s FedRAMP announced significant structural changes to the way the government will assess cloud service providers. […]

The United States and Germany are meeting to discuss international security in cyberspace, cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection, cyber defense, combating cyber crime, Internet freedom, and Internet governance. The meetings build off of June 2014 discussions held in Berlin, which focused on collaboration in key cyber issues over the last decade. […]

Skilled workforce retention is a major problem for the Department of Defense’s IT issues, according to DOD CIO Terry Halvorsen, and salaries are partly to blame. […]

The fledgling cyber insurance industry may hold the key to improving cybersecurity practices across the nation, according to a panel of experts who testified Tuesday before a House subcommittee. “The expansion of cyber risks and the growth of the cyber insurance market are a tremendous opportunity for the insurance sector to lead in the development […]

Increasing Internet access will be a key component to boosting Cuban businesses, according to President Obama. In remarks made alongside Cuban President Raul Castro as well as a separate forum on Cuban entrepreneurship, the President emphasized the Internet’s role in improving and expanding the country’s ability to innovate. “In the 21st century, countries cannot be successful […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs is on what appears to be an irreversible losing streak when it comes to its annual cybersecurity audit. Last week, VA’s Office of the Inspector General slapped the agency with a “material weakness” designation for its information security efforts—the 16th year in a row that VA has failed the annual […]

Federal agencies remain woefully behind on cybersecurity, according to the annual cybersecurity compliance report released Friday by the Office of Management and Budget. During the 2015 fiscal year, Federal agencies reported 77,183 cybersecurity incidents, a 10% increase over the incidents reported in 2014. Though the administration believes this increase may be attributed to improved detection […]

Microsoft Azure was selected for a FedRAMP pilot program that will establish a high-impact baseline for cloud-computing services. This essentially allows Federal agencies to move more sensitive data onto contracted cloud-computing services, enabling the sensitive data to operate on the more technically advanced level that is already possible for low-impact data. […]

HealthCare.gov had a rocky rollout, but future Federal tech projects could learn a lot from its trials and successes, according to Erin Bliss at the HHS Office of Inspector General. She testified in front of the Senate Finance Committee alongside Seto Bagdoyan, the director of forensic audits at GAO. […]

The U.S. Small Business Administration has appointed Tracy Terrill to serve as its Chief Data Officer, a new position. […]

Self-driving car manufacturers are moving forward too quickly, according to Missy Cummings, the director of Duke University’s Humans and Autonomy Laboratory. She testified alongside four representatives from the motor vehicle industry at the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee. […]

The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology released a report that suggests 12 current and future technologies and policies that could help older people live longer, more engaged lives. […]

With telework on the rise, the National Institute of Standards and Technology is updating its guidelines for securing data to include smartphones, tablets, and unsecured laptops that may pose a greater weakness to a company’s security. […]