The Department of Defense (DoD) data strategy already provides an overarching vision, focus areas, guiding principles, essential capabilities, and goals necessary to transform the DoD into a data-centric enterprise. Yet, according to DoD officials, another very necessary element to making this strategy work is clear communication throughout the entire department. […]

General Services Administration GSA

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced it will be pushing back the release of requests for proposals (RFP) for its Polaris Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) vehicle until January 2022, the agency announced on its interact GSA blog. […]

Pentagon DoD Defense Military

Despite the Department of Defense’s (DoD) efforts to add its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certificate (CMMC) program to its acquisition process beginning in 2021 and up until full implementation in fiscal year (FY) 2026, a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that DoD has not met its implementation goals, nor properly communicated key decisions with industry. […]

After a spate of cyberattacks and ransomware attacks on American companies and critical infrastructure providers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers and members of the cybersecurity industry expressed shock and disappointment that mandatory cyber incident reporting was dropped from the conferenced version of the fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) has announced establishment of a Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO), responsible for strengthening and integrating data, AI, and digital solutions across DoD. […]

Cybersecurity

Two major pieces of cybersecurity legislation – a Senate-approved bill to reform the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), and another bill to standardize reporting requirements for major cybersecurity incidents – both failed to make the cut in the House-Senate conference version of the fiscal year (FY) 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that passed the House Dec. 7. […]

Navy

The Department of the Navy has a good sense of how data is generated on the mission side, but struggles to analyze that data and decide appropriate uses for it, according to the Navy’s Chief Data Officer (CDO) Tom Sasala. […]

VA

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is contracting JumpStart, an app developer, to build a platform using AI and a user’s own body to improve the physical therapy process – unless other off-the-shelf apps are identified with equal or greater capabilities. […]

Emerging tech
cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a second cloud computing region specifically intended to host top-secret classified information from U.S. defense, intelligence, and national security agencies. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is acknowledging strides that the Biden administration has taken this year to broadly improve cybersecurity, but is still encouraging the Federal government to take more steps to strengthen the cybersecurity of the nation’s critical infrastructure in light of several high-profile cyber incidents over the course of the past year. […]

GPS
5G Broadband rural broadband FCC-min

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) released the third installment of the Security Guidance for 5G Cloud Infrastructures four-part series, which is intended to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data within a 5G core cloud infrastructure. […]

cybersecurity

Federal mandates, including Cloud Smart and the Biden administration’s cybersecurity executive order, are pushing agencies to modernize and migrate to the cloud. But with modernization comes complexity. Agencies are increasingly living in a hybrid world, with some workloads remaining on-premises while others move to the cloud. Add multi-cloud vendors to the mix, and it becomes harder for agencies to have a holistic view across their environments. […]

Since the release of the Cloud First mandate in 2011, the Federal government has been pushing agencies to modernize legacy technology and migrate to the cloud. While Cloud First evolved into Cloud Smart, agencies have historically taken a measured approach to cloud migration. On the most recent FITARA scorecard, only three agencies scored an A in the Modernizing Government Technology category. Eleven agencies scored a C or below. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that a Russian cybercriminal, charged with providing hosting services for fellow cybercriminals, will serve 60 months in prison for services he provided for malware distribution and attacks on American financial institutions between 2009 and 2015. […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released the final draft of its Internet of Things (IoT)-specific guidance for Federal organizations, intended to support extending their risk management process to the inclusion of IoT devices in Federal systems. […]

White House

In a new memorandum from the Biden administration, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jason Miller detailed how the White House would like to direct $100 billion in Federal contracting opportunities to small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs). […]

cybersecurity

To protect high value assets (HVAs), Jennifer Franks, the director of information technology and cybersecurity team at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), recommends agencies build a more structured organization around HVAs, or even a designated team, as opposed to only having one or two people with access to HVAs. […]

Cybersecurity
EHR

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) released a detailed schedule for its Electronic Health Records Modernization (EHRM) program deployment plans, with revised plans to deploy the EHRM program at a second location in Columbus, Ohio, on March 5, 2022. […]

Identity management is one of the main pillars of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Zero Trust Maturity Model, but CISA’s program lead for the Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) program office Sean Connelly said that while identity is an important pillar, it should not be the only pillar agencies focus on. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has announced that it will be advancing its electronic health record modernization (EHRM) program and add two new positions to help the program more forward. […]

cybersecurity chip AI

The Department of Defense (DoD) has been taking steps to improve how it acquires and licenses intellectual property (IP) for technology required for cutting-edge weapons systems, but the agency still has more work to do with firming up responsibilities of a new IP Cadre group that it formed to make sure that the IP licensing functions work better. […]

CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced the members of its new Cybersecurity Advisory Committee, which will be tasked with advising and providing recommendations to the CISA director on policies, programs, planning, and training to enhance the nation’s cyber defense. […]

The Department of Energy (DoE) has awarded Verizon two digital communications modernization contracts totaling $34.6 million, utilizing the General Service Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract vehicle, the telecommunications company announced Dec. 1. […]

Emerging tech

Digital transformation allows agencies to modernize their information technology portfolios more disciplined, well-managed, and controlled. However, Federal officials said that a lack of governance and direction makes a digital transformation difficult to achieve. […]

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