With vendors in various stages of approval for companies in the Federal Risk Assessment and Management Program (FedRAMP) program, getting a cloud offering approved and at the right level can be confusing, but new guidance from the FedRAMP program management office (PMO) aims to fix that. […]

The worsening worldwide shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals is shaping up to be a key driver to cloud-delivered security services, explained Peter Firstbrook, a VP analyst with Gartner, at the company’s Security and Risk Management Summit on June 17. […]

As the Department of Homeland Security Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM) has begun migrating its biometric processing system to the cloud, the office issued a Request for Information (RFI) today to gather information for developing, maintaining, and securing its data on the new cloud environment. […]

Agencies continue to move their data to the cloud, but increasing adoption of cloud applications outside of existing security programs like FedRAMP (the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) and the CIO’s office brings security concerns as well, a new report notes. […]

The FedRAMP program has provided more authorizations to software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and reduced the time to authorization in the last three years of the program, according to an analysis of the program. […]

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) decided to migrate its antiquated legacy IT to the cloud after realizing that it’s old IT was driving the ATF into technical debt and that it lacked disaster recovery (DR). […]

Federal agencies should strive to bring talent with cloud migration and development skills in-house rather than hiring contractors to handle migrations, said Major Gen. John Ferrari, director of the Army Program Analysis and Evaluation Office. […]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) extended a request for information on a potential enterprise data exchange to share weather observations across the globe. Responses are now due by June 17. […]

General Services Administration (GSA) Senior Solution Architect Richard Bright hailed several benefits of the agency’s migration to cloud services at the Alfresco Government Summit conference today, including resulting service improvements and an uptick in workforce culture. […]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the General Services Administration’s Technology and Transformations Services unit (GSA TTS) issued six requests for information (RFI) today identifying key areas for phase two of the Centers of Excellence (CoE) program. […]

The Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) released a white paper this month that reinforces its suggested practices to bolster cloud security, privacy, and compliance. […]

As government agencies start and continue to migrate to cloud platforms, it is important to adopt multi-cloud environments and back it up with smart use of data, said Department of Agriculture (USDA) Associate CIO Edward Reyelts and Maryland Department of Information Technology (IT) Secretary Michael Leahy. […]

Federal agencies have made a slow but sure increase in cloud service investments, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report last week. […]

While Federal agencies are making progress in moving to the cloud, challenges exist in tracking the cost savings benefits of those moves due to a lack of agency-level guidance and confusion about tracking under guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Monday, May 6. […]

The General Services Administration (GSA) outlined ten tips for Federal agencies to follow in their efforts to migrate to cloud-based systems as part of a cloud smart push. […]

According to a new survey, a majority of organizations keep at least some of their mission-critical apps in the cloud, signaling a shift in how enterprises place their trust in cloud services. […]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is looking to establish an enterprise-wide approach to data analytics in the cloud and application development, according to a request for information (RFI) released Tuesday, April 30. Responses are due May 6. […]

Professional services company, Accenture, has won a blanket purchase order agreement contract – worth a potential $2 billion – from the Department of Energy (DOE), according to a news release on the company’s website. […]

U.S. Navy Cybersecurity Division Director Rear Admiral Danelle Barrett hashed out the Navy’s effort to modernize its on-ship communication network architecture to simplify data accessibility at Gov Exec’s April 25 Mission to Modernize. […]

With the Department of Defense focused on artificial intelligence (AI) to support the warfighter, cloud computing will be a big part in getting tools out to the tactical edge, said Dana Deasy, CIO of the department, at GDIT Emerge on April 23. […]

With the increasing ubiquity of internet of things (IoT) devices and the vast expansion of the cyber attack surface that those devices create, National Security Agency (NSA) IoT Enterprise Functional Team Lead Arlene Santos is emphasizing the importance of the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act reintroduced in Congress last month as way to address the cybersecurity concerns posed by rapid IoT device growth. […]

Boosting the use of cloud services may be the answer to expanding implementation of zero-trust models of cybersecurity across Federal agencies and departments, Education Department CISO Steven Hernandez said at an ACT-IAC meeting today. […]

The U.S. Army is partnering with the Air Force to use the Common Cloud Environment as part of the Army’s Cloud Strategic Framework, said Thomas Sasala, the Army’s chief data officer, on April 9. […]

The Small Business Administration Office of the Inspector General, or SBA OIG, raised concerns about oversight of the agency’s cloud migration, contracts with cloud providers, and ability to move data to other services in a report released April 9. […]

As part of an aggressive cloud migration plan, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is aiming to move 350 apps – or about half the department’s portfolio – to the cloud by 2024, said VA CIO James Gfrerer today at ACT-IAC’s Health Innovation Day 2019. […]

For agencies looking at a multi-cloud strategy, managing different vendors and gaining expertise in different clouds is key to take advantage of the nuanced differences and prevent cloud sprawl, said Sanjay Gupta, chief technology officer for the Small Business Administration (SBA). […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) gave a 12-month provisional authorization to the Project Host Federal Private Cloud (PJHFPC) on April 1. PJHFPC is a platform as a service private cloud that hosts Impact Level 5 (IL5) controlled unclassified information data, and it has systems and services that manage access control, authentication, auditing, monitoring, scanning, […]

Moving data into the cloud has been a key component to building more secure and interoperable healthcare data and systems, and panelists showcased how that move has both empowered patients and driven precision medicine research forward at today’s CXO Health IT Modernization Tech Forum. […]

One of the major wrinkles to iron out in the Federal government’s move to the cloud has been security. Concerns regarding security have prompted some agencies to move cautiously, and the government to create whole programs dedicated to ensuring it. But cloud also provides some security advantages, which the Department of Defense (DoD) is taking advantage of to provide services to warfighters and small-business contractors. […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) rolled out a new cloud-based storage system, milDrive, this month, which the agency said make accessing and sharing its information more secure, flexible, and reliable. […]