State Department

FedRAMP released its plan to align with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) latest update to SP 800-53, Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations, Revision 5 (Rev5). […]

CX Customer experience -min

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has released a “Customer Experience (CX) Cookbook” for Federal agencies that features key ingredients and recipes for embedding CX in Federal services and for cooking up CX best practices. […]

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LMNL) has turned to a mobile app to let the public time travel to the 1940s. LMNL announced that it has re-released its mobile app, The Secret City: Project Y, which allows users to explore Los Alamos, N.M., as it was during the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is looking for cloud hosting for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response’s (ASPR) website. […]

Cybersecurity

The dark web has long provided a safe haven for cybercriminals to plot illicit activities, often with huge implications for the government. To stay ahead of cybercriminals, Federal agencies have to investigate threats and emerging adversaries on their networks – but that is easier said than done. […]

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is looking to move its current filing platform to a cloud-based platform, according to a Nov. 23 request for information (RFI). In the RFI, the FEC said it is looking to create a “modern, state of the art, cloud-based, secure, platform-independent electronic filing data application.” […]

Coast Guard

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) plans to modernize a key system and move it to the cloud to support better information sharing, improved data management, and enhanced security, according to a notice in the Federal Register released November 23. […]

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, both the public and private sector are turning to telework to help stem the spread of the virus. This reliance on telework has increased investment in cloud computing services, which will cause the cloud market to grow 18.4 percent in 2021, according to a Nov. 17 report from Gartner. […]

Federal agencies are leveraging past work on authorizations to operate (ATO) to bring in more cloud tools covered by the Federal Risk Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Brian Conrad, FedRAMP Cybersecurity Program Manager. […]

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) guidance on Federal workforce rotational cybersecurity assignments envisions 120-day rotation assignments to other agencies, and lists  several programs that rotations may run through, according to a Nov. 18 memo to agency heads from Michael Rigas, Acting Director of OPM. […]

cloud
Washington DC capitol federal government-min
FCC

The Federal Communications Commission said Nov. 19 that it plans to consider a report and order at its Dec. 10 open meeting that would require some telecommunications service providers to remove and replace equipment in their networks that pose “unacceptable risks” to U.S. national security. […]

Cyber

The Defense Department’s (DoD) U.S. Cyber Command is introducing the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture (JCWA) – a concept to integrate cyber warfighting systems—but needs to define JCWA interoperability goals for the systems, the Federal government’s watchdog agency said. […]

identity management-min

As Federal agencies continue to keep a majority of their workforces teleworking – and may continue to do so for the longer term as the coronavirus pandemic heats up again – keeping identity management practices a top priority has been a key ingredient in Federal agency cybersecurity efforts. […]

State Department
Maria Roat

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated IT modernization and leveraged investments in cloud to keep agencies focused on the mission, which in turn is laying the groundwork for further modernization, said Maria Roat, Deputy Federal CIO, during a panel discussion today. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program is employing a multi-year view on helping Federal agencies to better protect their high-value assets (HVA), CDM Program Manager Kevin Cox indicated today. […]

Cloud

As the continuing coronavirus pandemic puts a spotlight on the need for mission continuity, Federal agencies need to understand their customers’ journeys and smooth the path for them, Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat said today. […]

A new bill introduced in the House and Senate by two recognized congressional cybersecurity leaders would push Federal agencies to further adopt cybersecurity best practices by making it more difficult to obtain waivers under the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015. […]

CISA

Few things seem to unite Republicans and Democrats these days, but President Trump’s abrupt firing of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs seems to be one of the issues bucking that trend. President Trump fired Krebs via his Twitter account on Tuesday evening, prompting a mix of outrage and disapproval from members of Congress […]

Washington DC capitol federal government-min
video conferencing

Now that much of the Federal government workforce has eight months of pandemic-driven telework under its belt, government officials are examining how that experience has changed the future landscape of providing service to citizens, and how to incorporate lessons learned for what may be the longer haul of remote work. […]

Sean Connelly, who heads the TIC Program Office at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said today that his office is aiming to release a remote-user use case for the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 security initiative that will build on interim TIC guidance the agency issued earlier this year to help Federal agencies migrate quickly to large-scale telework. […]

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