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. […]

stackArmor, a provider of approval-to-operate (ATO) acceleration services for government organizations, today released its Approval To Operate (ATO) for AI accelerator. […]

The Department of Defense (DoD) on Sept. 20 announced its first set of awards under the CHIPS Act totaling $240 million to establish eight microelectronics commons innovation hubs. […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded 18 university research teams across the country a total of $29 million to conduct research on quantum-scale sensors. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced on Wednesday that it has seized over $1.4 billion in COVID-19 relief funding stolen by criminals since the start of the pandemic, with over $200 million recovered in the past three months. […]

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program has renewed funding for seven academic institutions, providing more than $24 million over the next four years to support the development of a robust and resilient cybersecurity workforce. […]

The Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gilbert Cisneros will be stepping down from his role at the Department of Defense (DoD) in early September. […]

As AI technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace, experts with the technology told members of Congress on July 25 that the United States needs a single regulatory agency that can invest heavily in AI research and put proper safeguards in place. […]

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is investing $162 million into different institutions that will drive research into materials science to create “tangible benefits” for society.
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U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton announced Federal charges on June 28 against 14 people who allegedly defrauded the Small Business Administration’s SBA COVID-relief Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) of $53 million. […]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hosted a DigitalVA Expo today in Palo Alto, California, where VA leaders shared some of the technology experiences the agency has been working on to improve care for veterans, as well as the transformation that needs to happen at the VA to continue to build excellence in technical solutions. […]

Panelists at a Capitol Hill hearing made a broad call today for employers to no longer require four-year college degrees when it comes to hiring a robust cybersecurity workforce. […]

Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., Ken Buck, R-Colo., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., have introduced long-awaited legislation to create a national commission that would focus on regulating AI technologies. […]

President Biden traveled to San Francisco Tuesday to meet with AI experts and researchers as part of a process to “rapidly develop decisive actions we can take over the coming weeks,” a White House official said in an announcement. […]