While the term “cybersecurity is a team sport” has long been used to reiterate the importance of collaboration within and between agencies on matters of network protection, a senior California state official is pointing to how Federal, state, and academic entities in California are putting this mantra into action. […]

MeriTalk, a public-private partnership dedicated to improving the outcomes of government information technology, is pleased to announcement the appointment of John Thomas Flynn as Senior Advisor, Government Programs. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) has dropped a legal challenge to California’s net neutrality statute – a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration in 2018. The withdrawal of the lawsuit to block the state law provides an opportunity for net neutrality rules to return on a Federal level. […]

California’s landmark data privacy law, which went into effect in January and gives consumers greater access and control over their personal information, will now be enforced, according to the state’s attorney general. […]

Verily Life Sciences plans to begin offering online COVID-19 coronavirus screening and information services to parts of the San Francisco area today, separate from virus information site efforts by its sister company Google. […]

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) that took effect earlier this week will not only erect a higher data privacy bar for citizens of the state, but also may put an important policy stake in the ground for Federal lawmakers who are weighing nationwide data privacy legislation. […]

Microsoft said on Nov. 11 that it will “honor” throughout its U.S. operations the “core protections” contained in the California Consumer Privacy Act that is set to take effect in January 2020. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office Inspector General (OIG) discovered in a July 31 report that a VA healthcare facility in Long Beach, California, failed to adhere to VA and Veterans Health Administration (VHA) privacy and security policies in the midst of a patient electronic health record (EHR) complication. […]

California has agreed to delay enforcing its net neutrality law, signed in September, that put the state at odds with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and many telecommunications industry groups. The law reinstates Obama-era net neutrality rules and was scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2019. […]

California may agree to delay enforcement of its new net neutrality law, which is scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1 2019, according to Politico. […]

Gov. Jerry Brown on Sept. 28 signed into law S.B. 327, which will ban companies from selling Internet-connected devices with weak or default passwords, such as “Password” or “1234567.” Instead, beginning on Jan. 1, 2020, all devices must have a “preprogrammed password [that] is unique to each device manufactured.” A primary concern with weak pre-programmed passwords is that users don’t change them to strong, unique passwords after purchasing the device. […]

California Governor Jerry Brown on Sept. 29 signed S.B. 1001 into law. The legislation prohibits automated accounts–colloquially known as bots–from pretending to be human when attempting to “incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election.” […]

California’s state Senate pushed the Golden State one step closer to enacting the Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the FCC earlier this year. On Friday the state Senate passed the controversial bill, called SB 822, in a vote of 27-12 that was largely along party lines. […]

California’s state Assembly is attempting to turn back time on net neutrality by voting yesterday to approve a controversial bill that brings the state closer to enacting the Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the FCC earlier this year. […]

California lawmakers on Thursday passed the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, one of the toughest U.S. laws governing data privacy. The legislation specifically targets information companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, and AT&T–many of whom are headquartered in California. […]

The Federal Aviation Administration will replace existing air traffic control procedures in Southern California with new satellite-based procedures as part of its Next Generation Air Transportation System. […]

California is the 16th state to join the U.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen Initiative, which encourages educators to use openly licensed educational material. […]

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is leading congressional efforts to prevent Chinese foreign nationals from accessing the Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories, citing national security concerns.   […]

This week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) awarded $250 million to the 11 states hosting FIFA World Cup 2026 matches and to the National Capital Region to help them defend against unauthorized drone activity. […]

It was a busy year for the federal government and the federal court system. As an early Christmas present, MeriTalk wrapped up some of the year’s biggest lawsuits and where they stand.  […]

Garfield “Gary” Jones stepped down as the associate chief of strategic technology at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) – where he led the agency’s post-quantum cryptography (PQC) initiative – to join QuSecure as senior vice president of research and technology strategy. […]

A court-ordered block on Trump administration-issued reductions in force (RIF) will remain in effect after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday afternoon, preventing future RIF notices during the government shutdown.   […]

The Department of the Air Force is inviting private companies to build large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) data centers on unused land at five military bases. […]

President Donald Trump has nominated Arvind Raman to be the next director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the under secretary of commerce for standards and technology.  […]

The Space Development Agency (SDA) launched 21 satellites Oct. 15 as part of its growing data transport network. The launch was the second mission in a campaign to deploy 154 spacecraft under SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). […]

David Sacks, the White House’s artificial intelligence “czar,” said he wants to preempt a patchwork of state AI regulations, saying that current legislation may push diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements onto developers.   […]

A federal judge is temporarily allowing select federal agencies and unions to continue collective bargaining after executive orders from President Donald Trump earlier this year sought to cancel those agreements.  […]

The government shutdown and Congress’s failure to reauthorize the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA 15) have put cyber defenses at risk, cybersecurity experts are warning, saying the pressure is now on state and local governments and industry members.   […]

The Trump administration’s plans for reorganizing and reducing the federal workforce may soon become public after a federal appeals court upheld a district court order requiring their disclosure in ongoing litigation.  […]

Legislation that would fund artificial intelligence scholarships, centers, and teaching resources to expand education and cyber workforce training was introduced Tuesday by Rep. Vince Fong, D-Calif.  […]