State and Federal representatives testified to the need for a first responder-only network and offered their support of FirstNet’s efforts during a recent Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing. […]
IBM released its new mainframe, IBM z14, which offers encryption for 100 percent of user data and achieves the highest level of government security standards currently on the market. The mainframe will be made available in mid-September and IBM is working with the Federal government to integrate this technology into its IT strategies. […]
The Department of Justice announced on July 20 that it was recently able to take down dark website AlphaBay and its administrator. The action was in conjunction with Europol as well as law enforcement authorities in Thailand, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. […]
If Federal agencies invest upfront in technologies to track fraud and improper payments, the government could end up saving enough money to pay back some of the national debt or stave off sequestration, according to Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. […]
BlackBerry announced the expansion of its public sector cybersecurity offerings to include SecuSUITE for Government, which provides end-to-end encryption of calls and texts and supports iOS, Android, and BlackBerry 10 smartphones and tablets. […]
To score a home run, you have to cover all the bases. But getting from start to finish is harder than it looks. For Federal agencies, hitting IT out of the park is even more difficult due to budget constraints, lengthy procurement processes, and staffing difficulties. And, as agencies continue to spend 79 percent of IT budgets – or $62 billion annually – on legacy systems, the window for innovation decreases every day. So how can agencies stay ahead of the curve? […]
Cyber criminals are more and more often using tools and processes already installed in target computers, called “living off the land,” to ease hacking efforts and reduce the chance of detection, according to a recent Symantec study. […]
The White House is celebrating Made in America Week, while many U.S.-based technology companies advocate for H-1B visas to sponsor foreign workers who engineer some of the nation’s most lucrative technology products. […]
The State Department’s cyber coordinator will be stepping down at the end of this month, according to reports from Politico. Chris Painter has been creating a strategic framework for cybersecurity during peacetime and gaining support from other countries. […]
Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to President Donald Trump, urging him to make digital trade a priority in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. […]
The General Services Administration is close to awarding a $50 billion contract for its Enterprise Infrastructure Solution (EIS), Bill Zielinski, assistant commissioner for category management at GSA, announced July 13. […]
More than one-third of the Small Business Administration’s 120 circuits are overloaded. To resolve this issue, chief information officer Maria Roat plans to modernize SBA’s infrastructure by moving to a “pure Ethernet backbone.” She said Ethernet will help employees with Skype and virtual counseling, and will extend to all of the agency’s field offices. […]
The pressure is on for agencies to make the move to cloud – just 13 percent of Feds say they can deploy new systems as fast as required. However, agencies know cloud is here to stay. When it comes down to it, Feds are optimistic – 70 percent say increasing their cloud adoption pace will improve IT’s ability to innovate. That said, flying through the cloud procurement process is no easy feat. Making the cloud move is proving to be more complex than expected – but with the right planning and strategic moves, Feds can ensure they undergo a surprise-free move. […]
The secret to the Small Business Administration’s success in going from cloud launch to receiving an authority to operate (ATO) in less than three months was to burn the bridge back to the old way of doing things and commit completely to cloud migration, according to SBA Deputy CIO Guy Cavallo and CTO Sanjay Gupta. […]
The Federal Acquisition Regulation, the guidelines dictating how Federal agencies procure goods and services, is not flexible enough to keep pace with modernizing agencies, according to Jennifer Hoover, DevOps program manager for the Transportation Security Administration. […]
One of the drives for agencies to move to a mobile, cloud environment is to attract millennials, who are used to having their data on demand. […]
Cloud helps organizations focus on the important parts of their mission, rather than wasting their time on maintenance and compliance, according to Peter Cutts, senior vice president of hybrid cloud platforms at Dell EMC. […]
Members of Congress urged Defense Secretary James Mattis in a letter to incorporate cybersecurity into high school Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) programs. […]
As a Democratic senator drafts a bill to look into artificial intelligence policy, Elon Musk and Google teach machines human judgment in order to avoid the robot apocalypse. […]
While President Donald Trump talks about creating a Cybersecurity Unit with Russia, government officials told the Washington Post that Russian government hackers were behind recent cyber intrusions into the business systems of U.S. nuclear power and other energy companies. […]
In 2012, the Office of Management and Budget listed 14 cross-agency priority goals as part of the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act. One topic identified was continuous monitoring of Federal IT networks. The next year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a $6 billion program to address this: the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program. […]
How do agencies tackle cloud adoption? Everyone has a different story but the challenges are similar across state and local government. Learn how other states are navigating the challenges of modernizing IT and how these organizations have found success in adopting the cloud. […]
As the needs of Federal employees push agencies to move more and more services to the cloud, join MeriTalk and Government Acquisitions Inc. for the Federal Focus: The Cloud Generation event on July 12 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., to discuss the best practices and results of Federal cloud migration. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., co-author of FITARA and IT reform advocate, will keynote the lunch session at the event. […]
Many states and localities don’t have the resources to upgrade and protect their election systems from malicious cyber intrusion, and the Federal government should work to provide them with those resources, according to a recent Brennan Center report on election cybersecurity. […]
Kaspersky Lab is willing to turn over its source code to the U.S. government to dispel rumors that the company has ties to the Russian Kremlin, CEO Eugene Kaspersky told the Associated Press on July 1. “If the United States needs, we can disclose the source code,” Kaspersky said. “Anything I can do to prove that we don’t behave maliciously, I will do it.” […]
Some states refused to turn over voter data to the White House on June 30, saying that the data requested contains sensitive information and could be used for political purposes. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May that established the Commission on Election Integrity, which investigates instances of potential voter fraud. The commission asked the states to turn over all publicly available voter data. […]
Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Susan Brooks, R-Ind., and Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Ed Markey, D-Mass., introduced legislation June 29 to combat cyber crime by mandating that the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Federal Trade Commission, and the department of Homeland Security (DHS) establish baseline best practices for the private sector. […]
Cloud computing allows both small and large manufacturers to use new production systems, including 3-D printing, high-performance computing, and the Internet of Things, and robots, an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation report found. […]
The cyberattack that spread across Europe on June 27 was declared not a ransomware attack after further observation by researchers. The “Not Petya” attack didn’t encrypt files on the infected computers. Instead, it wiped the entire drive, making it impossible to retrieve files if they weren’t backed up on another device. […]
GSA’s 18F provides positive competition to consultants and contractors, according to Booz Allen Hamilton vice president Bryce Pippert. The proof: the success of DATA Act implementation and the beta website of usaspending.gov. […]