When government agencies face a network breach, having a planned response protocol in place can make all the difference, according to industry experts. “The first thing that they have to do is they have to really take a hard look at their incident response protocol,” said Rob Potter, vice president of public sector at Symantec. He […]

The Defense Department is likely within 18 months of introducing autonomous cybersecurity tools that will be capable of augmenting human analysts by predicting threats and dynamically isolating parts of the network that may come under attack, outgoing CIO Terry Halvorsen said. […]

The preponderance of legacy systems in the Federal government poses a major obstacle to improved agency cybersecurity practices, according to Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office. […]

The decennial census earned a place on the Government Accountability Office’s 2017 High Risk List, due to its information technology-oriented agenda, according to Robert Goldenkoff, director of strategic issues at GAO. […]

Jason Matheny, director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, discussed the role technology plays in assisting the intelligence and law enforcement communities, as well as ongoing IARPA research. […]

The government needs to help provide educational resources to address the shortage of qualified workers to fill U.S. cybersecurity positions, according to witnesses at a House Science, Space, and Technology committee hearing. […]

Gregory Reams, leader of the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis program, said that the open data sets his office makes available are unlikely to suffer the same fate as the animal welfare documents that disappeared from the Department of Agriculture website. “It’s been supported for 80 years and used by a wide constituency,” Reams said at Esri’s FedGIS conference. […]

The Federal Aviation Administration has registered 690,000 unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, since late 2015. This drone influx has created a new set of data management challenges, according to FAA officials. […]

The best cloud companies to work for all make an effort to create a culture of employee engagement and success. Forbes released a list of the top cloud companies to work for, including M-Files, Apprenda, Zerto, OutSystems, Mendix, and DocuSign. MeriTalk reached out to them in order to learn the secrets of the best workplaces. […]

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Center for Climate Simulation processes reams of data that are as dense as music playlists containing 190,000 years’ worth of songs. […]

When it comes to automating information security processes, even small investments in specific areas of security can lead to big improvements, according to experts speaking in a MeriTalk webinar. […]

The latest draft of President Donald Trump’s long-awaited executive order on cybersecurity requires a plan for transitioning all Federal agencies to shared services for email, cloud computing, and cybersecurity, and directs senior officials to study the feasibility of transitioning agencies to one or more consolidated network architectures. […]

Agency chief information officers realize the need to convert from on-premise data centers to the cloud, but still find it challenging to convince agency heads that it’s a necessary step. David Bray, CIO of the Federal Communications Commission, said Feb. 8 at the Cloud Computing Caucus Advisory Group meeting, “If you are wedded to legacy systems you are trying to turn a battleship very, very slowly.” […]

Collaboration and a willingness to learn new practices are the best ways to address cybersecurity concerns surrounding cloud computing, according to IT leaders from across the country. Greg Urban, chief operations officer of Maryland, said that a strong core of talent makes a big difference when exploring cloud capabilities. […]

Congress will pursue IT modernization legislation just as meticulously as in the last Congress, in large part due to the high retention of active representatives in the last election, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said at the Cloud Computing Caucus Advisory Group’s Destination Cloud event. […]

Authors of the 2017 Cisco cybersecurity report encouraged governments to communicate better with the private sector, disclosing the vulnerabilities they discover rather than holding that information in reserve. […]

The on-again, off-again story of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ $642 million commercial scheduling system is not only back on track, but is likely part of a larger movement by the department to finally adopt a commercial electronic health record system. […]

Chief information officers, especially those in the health care sector, should be aware of a shift in spending when they move to the cloud, advised Tom Andriola, CIO of the University of California school system. […]

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology are working to create a wearable blood pressure monitor one fake arm at a time. […]

The Federal CIO Council’s State of Federal Information Technology report stated that Federal agencies spent more than $2 billion on cloud computing services in Fiscal Year 2016. Rob Stein, vice president of Public Sector for NetApp, said that amount will increase this year. […]

Though lessons learned from the Office of Personnel Management data breach have resulted in many improvements in cybersecurity practices, the 2015 breach and subsequent cyber incidents led members at a House Oversight Committee hearing to question the pace of Federal data protection efforts. “Right now it is an uphill fight,” said Department of Defense CIO Terry Halvorsen. […]

Open data supporters have expressed trepidation over a new House bill that states Federal agencies will no longer be able to use geospatial information to create open databases on racial disparities and affordable housing. […]

Less than six months into her tenure as the Department of Veterans Affairs’ chief information security officer, Roopangi Kadakia has been tasked to lead the agency’s cloud efforts. Dominic Cussatt will take over as acting CISO, according to an internal agency memo obtained by MeriTalk. […]

A majority of Americans reportedly lack trust in the Federal government and other key institutions to protect their personal information, but many still fail to practice basic digital security in their personal lives, according to a recent study. […]

President Donald Trump was expected to issue an executive order on cybersecurity Jan. 31, but its release has been delayed. Although the details of the final executive order remain uncertain, Faisal Iqbal, chief technology officer of Citrix’s Public Sector, said this order may serve as the catalyst for a much-needed conversation on cybersecurity. […]

President Donald Trump and members of his national security team met with industry cybersecurity leaders today in what was billed as a “listening session” prior to the signing of an executive order that will introduce some fundamental changes to the government’s approach to national cybersecurity. […]

Companies that get the most financial benefits from cloud adoption all carry certain characteristics, a survey from CloudHealth Technologies found. […]

A draft cybersecurity executive order would mandate a review of the most critical U.S. cyber vulnerabilities, the principal cyber adversaries of the U.S., ways to incentivize cybersecurity measures in the private sector, and the capabilities of the DoD, DHS, and the NSA. […]

Almost one-fifth of Feds said they are outright not supporting data collaboration across teams, according to a new MeriTalk study. “Acing the Big Data Test,” created in partnership with the data services company Teradata, reveals how Federal agencies are managing big data and how they can improve information sharing practices. […]

A Federal Communications Commission report on Cybersecurity Risk Reduction tells the agency to consider making cybersecurity a focus of its mission. […]