Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy

Recent government initiatives and executive orders have left Avi Bender, director of the National Technical Information Service, and Michael Whitaker, vice president of emerging solutions at ICF, optimistic about the future of Federal innovation and partnership with the private sector. […]

Axon launched a new law enforcement initiative this month. The provider of connected law enforcement technologies will equip every police officer in the United States with a body camera–for free. Axon will also provide supporting hardware, software, data storage, training, and support to police departments free of cost for one year. […]

As IBM continues a strategic rebound under CEO Ginni Rometty, cloud already accounts for 17 percent of its business. But with cloud still in its early stages of development, IBM is doubling down on a few key aspects of the IBM cloud that make it different and potentially a game-changer for its corporate and government clients. […]

When government agencies face a network breach, having a planned response protocol in place can make all the difference, according to industry experts. “The first thing that they have to do is they have to really take a hard look at their incident response protocol,” said Rob Potter, vice president of public sector at Symantec. He […]

Happy Employee

The best cloud companies to work for all make an effort to create a culture of employee engagement and success. Forbes released a list of the top cloud companies to work for, including M-Files, Apprenda, Zerto, OutSystems, Mendix, and DocuSign. MeriTalk reached out to them in order to learn the secrets of the best workplaces. […]

President Donald Trump was expected to issue an executive order on cybersecurity Jan. 31, but its release has been delayed. Although the details of the final executive order remain uncertain, Faisal Iqbal, chief technology officer of Citrix’s Public Sector, said this order may serve as the catalyst for a much-needed conversation on cybersecurity. […]

Federal Joint Analysis Reports should include stronger language on indicators of compromise, according to Cris Thomas, a network security strategist at Tenable. DHS and the FBI released a JAR on Dec. 29 that discusses the tools Russian intelligence officers used to compromise the networks and infrastructure associated with the recent U.S. presidential election. […]

Microsoft announced that its Azure and Office 365 cloud service became the first commercial cloud to be awarded Impact Level 5 DoD Provisional Authorization by the Defense Information Systems Agency, which allows the cloud to store the most sensitive, controlled, unclassified information. Microsoft also announced general availability of the service to all validated Department of Defense customers. […]

Centrify and SailPoint Technologies have tools to address the tasks outlined in Phase 2 of the Department of Homeland Security’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program, according to representatives from the companies and DHS itself. […]

Though governments around the world have made an effort to establish national cybersecurity strategies, 66 percent of cybersecurity professionals said that those strategies were incoherent or incomplete, according to a survey conducted by the Enterprise Strategy Group and Information Systems Security Association. […]

Financial reporting experts advocated for the adoption of a standard business reporting method that would make it easier for businesses to both submit data to the government and use the government’s publicly available information. […]

The General Services Administration has reached a software acquisition agreement with Adobe to provide streamlined data security and electronic solutions for government, enabling agencies to meet the requirements of Federal information security and electronic government policy. […]

Four recent studies conducted by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) on the impacts of additive manufacturing, advanced robotics and automation, roll-to-roll manufacturing, and smart manufacturing have found that these technologies could save U.S. manufacturing approximately $100 billion annually. […]

In the wake of October’s Distributed Denial of Service attack that used hundreds of unsecured devices to prevent access to a number of U.S. websites, Reps. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., wrote a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez asking that her agency take action to ensure greater security of Internet of Things devices. […]

If government agencies don’t cooperate with both each other and the private sector on threat intelligence, they’ll never be able to keep up with the hackers working against them, according to Cloudera’s director of cybersecurity strategy, Sam Heywood. […]

Though many agencies want to, or are mandated to, move applications onto Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) tools, Dustin Laun says that agencies should be more deliberate in determining what they need from a platform provider. “I feel the government buys off of paper and presentations, and they don’t really know how simple these things are,” said Laun, contracted senior adviser for innovation and technology at the FCC. […]

Over the past few years, many government agencies have turned from doubting and distrusting the cloud to fully embracing its potential, according to Microsoft executives. […]

Categories