The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) instructed federal government agencies today to take further actions to identify FIRESTARTER malware that may be present in their systems and to take mitigation actions. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an emergency directive on Wednesday calling on federal civilian agencies to take immediate steps to secure Cisco Software-Defined Wide-Area Networking (SD-WAN) systems. […]

In the run-up to its recent conf.25 event, Cisco – through Splunk – underscored a pragmatic path forward: Put robust controls and oversight around AI systems, treat machine data as a strategic national asset, and deploy intelligent assistants that enhance efficiency and reduce operational burdens. The result, Splunk Senior Vice President and General Manager Kamal Hathi articulated, will be a profound transformation – a clear shift from human-centric workflows to agent-assisted operations across government and education. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned Wednesday that threat actors are continuing to target Cisco devices, issuing new implementation guidance after a large-scale attack earlier this fall.  […]

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is requiring FedRAMP authorized cloud service providers (CSPs) to identify and report all Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) platforms, following the issuance of an emergency directive by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) last week. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ordered federal agencies to take immediate action to patch vulnerabilities in the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) platform by Friday, Sept. 26, at 11:59 p.m. […]

MeriTalk recently sat down with Cisco’s Christina Hausman, who has more than 20 years of cybersecurity product expertise, to discuss how GenAI is changing the cybersecurity landscape and how AI-enabled security solutions not only protect agency networks and data, but also ensure the safe and responsible use of GenAI tools. […]

The government’s move to zero trust security is picking up speed, with Federal agencies facing an Office of Management and Budget deadline to meet specific zero trust goals by the end of fiscal year 2024. Peter Romness specializes in just this type of situation: the cybersecurity principal in the CISO Advisor’s Office at Cisco Systems has been helping government customers achieve their missions for nearly 35 years. In a recent interview with MeriTalk, Romness offered expert tips to agencies on how they can make faster progress – often with existing tools – in boosting cybersecurity and meeting the Federal mandates. […]

Comply-to-Connect began in 2013 as the Department of Defense’s (DoD) program to help the service branches prevent unsecured devices from connecting to the DoD network. Long before that, in the mid-to-late 1990s, Michael Overstreet served as an Air Force information warfare officer working on cyber defense. Now, Overstreet is director of systems engineering at Cisco, and in this recent interview, he discusses how Comply-to-Connect has evolved – and how it today uses zero trust principles to protect access to the DoD network and data. […]

The private and public sectors are coming together to beat back bad actors, and that public-private partnership is something that cybersecurity experts on Dec. 8 said is “vital” to better protect data across the board. […]

Today, everyone is talking about resilience, but achieving it can seem easier said than done. Security is an essential component of this mission-critical capability. In a recent interview with MeriTalk, Andy Stewart, senior national security and government strategist at Cisco, broke down security resilience into five dimensions. Stewart, who previously served as the assistant chief of staff for operations and maritime operations center director at fleet cyber command, U.S. Navy 10th Fleet, also discussed the role of zero trust in achieving resilience. […]

The year-plus of societal misery and dislocation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has helped to deliver two mega-trends to the Federal government IT landscape that will far outlast the public health crisis. The first is the permanence of remote work, and second is the urgent need to evolve IT security to defend expanded attack surfaces against increasingly sophisticated adversaries. […]

The changing cybersecurity landscape demands evolving technology and policy to help Federal agencies combat cyber threats and build resilience. MeriTalk spoke with Bryan Rosensteel, public sector cybersecurity architect at Cisco’s Duo Security, about the expansion of agency networks beyond traditional perimeters, how the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program is adapting to the changing landscape, and how dynamic authentication can help agencies stay ahead of bad actors. […]

Industry professionals weighed in this week with their views on how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 guidance also works to help enable adoption of zero trust security concepts. […]

Officials with several leading Federal IT service providers applauded government agency grades on last week’s FITARA Scorecard, but also suggested a range of grading category adjustments for the scorecard to better track where agency performance should be going in the future. […]

As states shift their voting processes and procedures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, another element of the process for states has been subject to change—Federal funding, an inconsistency that has caused local election officials to adapt on the fly. […]

As Federal agencies continue the long march away from on-premise networks to the world of cloud and SaaS, the payoff of that migration remains evident, as do a daunting range of complexities that come with the new network architectures. MeriTalk sat down with two Cisco veterans – Distinguished Architect Craig Hill, and Systems Architect Chris Hocker – to talk about cloud ready networks and how Federal agencies can best approach the network architectures necessary to realize the full potential of the cloud paradigm. […]

MeriTalk recently connected with Cisco’s Will Ash, Senior Director of Security Sales, and Peter Romness, Cybersecurity Solutions Lead, U.S. Public Sector CTO Office, on the current cyber threat landscape, how Zero Trust plays into agencies’ evolving cyber defense plans, and the importance of public-private sector collaboration. […]

The present and future state of Federal IT has monumental challenges to address – modernization, data utilization, and automation just to name a few – but none are so critical, or enduring, as cybersecurity. It’s the threat that will never fully go away – and where eternal vigilance, and innovation, are the price of liberty. […]

TechNet, a bipartisan network of innovation economy CEOs and senior executives, announced Oct. 9 that it added four new members: Brighton Park Capital, Jyve, SmileDirectClub, and Teladoc Health. […]

The Cybersecurity Tech Accord (CTA) announced May 9 that 16 new companies have signed on to the agreement, bringing the total to more than 106 signatories one year after its creation.  […]

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance (DSA), an industry group which advocates for laws to promote “more efficient and effective spectrum utilization,” announced April 16 that Cisco Systems, Swarm Technologies, and UTStarcom have joined the Alliance. […]

Yesterday two academics proposed creating an international organization modeled after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), that would “provide assistance and relief to vulnerable citizens and enterprises affected by serious cyberattacks.” […]

Tech giants including Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, Cisco, Dell, and VMware are calling on the United States and other governments to invest in defensive, rather than offensive, cyber technologies. […]

Today, Suzette Kent will walk into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to start her tenure as Federal CIO. After cleaning out a few cobwebs–the office has been empty for over a year–Kent will get started on advancing the Trump Administration’s IT modernization priorities. […]

Latest certification gives Cisco a hat trick in the secure government cloud. […]

A hacker group named Dragonfly 2.0 has gained access to several companies that supply electricity to the U.S. power grid, according to Symantec. The new wave of cyberattacks could give attackers the means to severely disrupt affected operations centers in Europe and North America. Dragonfly 2.0 has been in operation since at least 2011 and is linked to the Russian government. […]

MeriTalk compiles a weekly roundup of contracts and other industry activity. Here’s what happened this week in the Federal Information Technology community. […]