A Barracuda report released Aug. 30 said that bad actors are using spear-phishing, account compromise, and insider impersonation to target Office 365 users. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Homeland Security announced the next phase of the “Smart and Secure Cities and Communities Challenge,” a partnership to bring together Smart City initiatives and DHS’s security expertise and resources, at the Global City Teams Challenge Expo. […]

Direct Relief, a humanitarian organization that delivers medical supplies to crisis areas, uses Esri mapping technology and data to send resources to Houston during Hurricane Harvey. Direct Relief uses data layers from the Census, the National Weather Service, and other open data platforms to target where certain medical supplies such as inhalers and other medications will be needed. […]

Military bases operate like their own towns and cities, and should be considered partners in smart city initiatives, according to Richard Kidd, deputy assistant secretary of the Army, who spoke at the Global City Teams Challenge Expo. “The Army runs 156 towns across America and every day more than 2 million people go to work inside those towns and cities that are Army installations,” said Kidd. “We are facing many of the challenges that you are facing.” […]

The Government Accountability Office found that the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration needs to clarify its policies for ensuring the privacy of drivers of connected vehicles. Thirteen of the 16 selected automakers in GAO’s study sell connected vehicles, and those 13 reported collecting, using, and sharing data on the cars’ locations and operations. […]

Successful smart city initiatives rely on cities collaborating with each other, the Federal government, the private sector, and citizens, according to city mayors and Federal experts who spoke at the Global City Teams Challenge Expo on Aug. 28. […]

Justice officials arrested Yu Pingan of Shanghai on Monday for supplying malware that has been connected to the 2015 Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breach in 2015. […]

CSRA announced Aug. 23 that it will test the Navy’s enterprise level integrated pay and personnel system operating on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform. CSRA will test the viability and flexibility of the human resource management (HRM) system. […]

Automation is inescapable, but that doesn’t mean jobs will be lost, according to Cathy Engelbert, CEO of Deloitte. Engelbert said in a LinkedIn post that new types of jobs will arise from the adoption of autonomous vehicles. […]

A recent study by the IBM X-Force Kassel, a research team that operates “massive spam honeypots” to examine the trends in unsolicited emails, has found that most spammers keep normal business hours and operate predominantly during the usual work week. […]

The Federal Transit Administration’s Mobility on Demand Sandbox program will fund 11 projects that allow transit providers to try Internet of Things (IoT) enabled services. […]

A draft of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) Cyber Working Group report on securing the nation’s critical infrastructure has found that while the U.S. has the capabilities to defend against cyber attacks, it lacks the coordination to do so effectively. […]

Comodo Threat Intelligence Labs discovered a new strand of ransomware that was used in email phishing campaigns in the beginning of August and is being used in a current hacking campaign. […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) experts from around the world published a letter to the United Nations on Sunday, calling on the organization to address the danger posed by lethal autonomous weapons. […]

President Donald Trump announced on Aug. 18 that he directed United States Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) to be elevated to full combatant command. […]

Federal Communications Commission CIO David Bray will not be taking up the role of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency chief ventures officer, as reported June 5, and will instead be moving to the private sector as senior fellow and executive-in-residence at People-Centered Internet, Bray confirmed to MeriTalk. […]

The United States needs to invest more resources in the security of election systems, Cook County (Ill.) Director of Elections Noah Praetz told the Election Assistance Commission. […]

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials tapped IBM to bring Watson into their software. APCO recently announced that APCO International’s new guide card software called APCO IntelliCommä will use IBM Watson Speech-to-Text and Watson Analytics to improve the scripts used by 911 operators. […]

The National Security Agency gave Columbus State University in Georgia a $174,000 grant to develop a cybersecurity training tool. “We are building a tool that people across the nation can use to develop cybersecurity training, which guarantees compliance with government and industry standards for cybersecurity workforce development,” said Shuangbao “Paul” Wang, a professor in CSU’s TSYS School of Computer Science. […]

DHS S&T announced Aug. 14 that it was awarding Metronome Software nearly $750,000 to strengthen the security of first responder sensor systems. Metronome Software, a software research and development company focused on working for the U.S. government, is  developing a technology to improve the security of first responders’ mobile device-based sensor systems. […]

Software patching can never be done quickly enough, but some initiatives are setting Federal agencies on the route to better patching policies, according to security experts. “The river’s gotten wider and deeper, and so as it’s moving more rapidly the problem is that a lot of the organizations haven’t been able to change how they’re structured to go with it,” said John Scott, president of Ion Channel. “Most organizations aren’t equipped to deal with it.” […]

Wipro announced that its big data analytics platform will be offered on Microsoft Azure. Wipro and Microsoft have collaborated on parts of the solution, including engineering, solution enhancements, and market strategy. […]

Demand for cybersecurity personnel is ever increasing, and cyber teams could benefit from a broad range of skills beyond the typical technical employees, according to experts who spoke at New America’s Embracing Innovation and Diversity in Cybersecurity event. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education recently released a Cybersecurity Workforce Framework that establishes a consistent vocabulary for recruiting and hiring cybersecurity talent. […]

The Air Force chief information security officer offered unusual advice to new security professionals: Don’t worry about every patch and vulnerability. “It’s OK if you can’t get to 800 controls,” said Peter Kim. “It’s OK if you miss a patch.” […]

The majority of Federal agencies are embracing converged infrastructure for their data center needs, and seeing improvements, according to a new MeriTalk report. “It amazes me that 72 percent of Federal IT managers are already stating that converged will become the central housing mechanism for their data center needs,” said Milo Speranzo at Tech Data. “That number is only going to increase and that increase will happen rapidly and in the near future.” […]

Following the Cybersecurity Executive Order, security professionals are focusing on risk management frameworks, and some agencies are turning to the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation Program. “Security is not something that you buy, it’s something that you do,” said Matt Conner of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. […]

The U.S. Cyber Command will begin to exercise its newly granted acquisition authority by the end of 2017 with its first industry day on Oct. 27. Congress gave CYBERCOM its own ability to purchase technology capabilities in order to keep up with the constantly changing nature of the cybersecurity sphere. CYBERCOM plans to hold its industry day at the Arthur Lundahl Conference Center in Springfield, Va. […]

Palo Alto Networks on Aug. 7 announced the formalization of their cooperation with the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation through signing a Data Exchange Agreement with Interpol. […]

The designation of the nation’s election systems as critical infrastructure will not infringe upon state and local authority to run elections. In a recent memo to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Members, Ranking Member Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., relayed communications from the Department of Homeland Security that reiterated that fact. […]