Ian Wallace has joined the State Department to serve as a senior advisor for the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues (S/CCI). Wallace tweeted that his new role will focus on cyber capacity building. […]
The Department of State had notified Congress in 2019 of its plans to create a bureau within the department to focus on cybersecurity, but a lack of data and evidence to justify the proposal may halt its progress. […]
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) guidance on Federal workforce rotational cybersecurity assignments envisions 120-day rotation assignments to other agencies, and lists several programs that rotations may run through, according to a Nov. 18 memo to agency heads from Michael Rigas, Acting Director of OPM. […]
The Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a new information memorandum that IT Acquisition, and Project Management and Cyber Threats, remain from the previous year as two of five management and performance challenges for the agency. […]
With a growing cyber workforce gap, Federal agencies need to get creative as they work to shore up their cyber defenses. What skillsets are most valuable for incoming cyber workers? And how can Federal agencies find talent in surprising places and nurture the talent they already have? […]
As the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to affect organizations across the United States, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) warned of common trends and attack vectors that are being used by malicious actors for financial or informational gain. […]
Across the Federal government, said Peter Ranks, deputy CIO for the information enterprise at the Department of Defense (DoD), and Jeanette Manfra, former assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, more holistic IT modernization is necessary both during and following government’s reliance on widespread telework. […]
Jim Sullivan, defense intelligence officer (DIO) for cyber at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), emphasized the value of offensive operations in cyberspace to deter nation-state attackers during a panel discussion this week at the RSA security conference in San Francisco. […]
A group of public sector cybersecurity leaders, speaking on a panel Feb. 24 at the RSA Public Sector Day event, discussed the challenge of reconciling competing priorities when assessing both the business value and mission value of cybersecurity investments. […]
Donna Dodson, Chief Cybersecurity Advisor for the IT Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), reflected today on the success of the agency’s cybersecurity framework and its contributions to cyber interoperability. […]
A National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) draft report on a new program to standardized and centralize cybersecurity regulations is now open for public comment. […]
Alongside a Federal employee pay raise and $25 million for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), the bipartisan and bicameral Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal includes IT funding boosts across agencies with an emphasis on cybersecurity. […]
The House Appropriations Committee released a second of five appropriations minibus FY2020 spending bills for Commerce-Justice-Science, Agriculture-Rural Development-FDA, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development. […]
The latest batch of priority open recommendations released April 11 by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) calls out existing IT and cybersecurity issues at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the IRS. […]
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said today that cybersecurity-related spending is due to rise by five percent in FY2020 on a government-wide basis under President Trump’s FY2020 budget proposal. […]
A Federal data breach disclosure law, which would require companies to report data breaches to customers within 30 days, will be reintroduced this year, according to Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) is seeking Rapid Innovation Fund (RIF) applications for fiscal year 2019, according to a broad agency announcement released Friday. […]
William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, made a spirited plea today for Federal government and private sector organizations to take additional steps to address cybersecurity and include operations at all levels in an “enterprise-wide security apparatus.” […]
A new memo from the Office of Personnel Management offers new hiring authorities to agencies in key STEM-field areas, including cybersecurity related jobs. […]
The latest edition of the Army’s annual Cyber X-Games exercise is designed to let Reserve and other cyber warriors team up to train in dealing with real-world situations. It is focused on protecting U.S. infrastructure, an area somewhat outside the norm for the exercises, but one that reflects an emerging potential battleground on the cyber landscape. […]
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen emphasized at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing this week the importance of shoring up United States cyber defenses, and said that effort would be helped by adequate funding and reorganization of a key DHS department. […]
In a previously announced move, the Pentagon elevated the U.S. Cyber Command to a full unified command. This reflects the universal role cyber operations–and potential cyber threats–have come to play across the range of military activities, and how relatively quickly virtual technologies have changed the game. […]
Artificial intelligence (AI) could increase global GDP by $15.7 trillion by 2030, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The prevalence of AI in modern society is growing at a rapid pace – and the Federal government needs to keep up. […]
In another example of how far the cyber domain is pervading every aspect of warfare, military units are beginning to add cyber protection testing to vehicles before they hit the road. […]
With $5 billion in global revenue, Symantec is the 500 pound yellow gorilla in the cybersecurity business. Some dimensions on the beast: installed at every Federal cabinet-level agency; supports 350,000 customers; tracks 700,000 hackers; and leverages more than nine trillion elements of security data. Now, that’s a big monkey. […]
FITARA Fault Lines My Capitol Hill listening post has picked up several encrypted messages from the Government Accountability Office suggesting that the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act may be widening some major fault lines across government. While the law was designed to strengthen the role of the chief information officer, the Situation Report has […]