Cybersecurity

  • The National Background Investigations Bureau will have its own director, who will report to the Office of Personnel Management. The administration says it doesn't have a specific timeline for implementing the new security clearance program or standing up the new agency, but changes will come in incremental stages.

    January 22, 2016
  • Crowell & Moring hosted a webinar for government contractors on what to expect this year, from election predictions to intellectual property rights.

    January 18, 2016
  • The Federal Risk Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) received specific funding for the first year and is conducting pilots try to improve the approval process of cloud service providers.

    January 18, 2016
  • Zach Goldstein, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s chief information officer, said the agency will expand the N-Wave network to offer mission areas access to the 100-gigabyte network in the coming year.

    January 15, 2016
  • Over the last several months, security researchers, private firms and some governmental organizations have expressed alarm at federal rules intended to prevent proliferation of offensive cyber tools.

    January 15, 2016
  • IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said the extra $290 million it got from Congress this year will help the agency improve customer service and identity theft and cybersecurity protections during the upcoming tax filing season. But it still doesn't have enough resources to improve other aspects of the agency's operations.

    January 14, 2016
  • Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said the administration's recently released cyber deterrence policy is "thin" and lacks new information about plans to stop cyber attacks.

    January 14, 2016
  • The Defense Department has made a push in recent years to invest more in cybersecurity. DoD's third offset strategy aims to bring the U.S. military into the future. And soon the President’s Fiscal 2017 budget request, which is set to come out in February, will reveal some of DoD’s third offset cyber plans. On Federal Drive with Tom Temin, Federal News Radio reporter Scott Maucione talks about DoD's cyber priorities with Dynamic Technology Solutions executive vice president for cybersecurity and intelligence, and retired Navy Adm. Norman Hayes.

    January 14, 2016
  • Cybersecurity rules for contractors — that's something the Defense Department has been emphasizing. The brass want companies that hold sensitive federal information to better safeguard it, and notify officials when there's a breach. But those rules are delayed. Federal Drive with Tom Temin discussed what this all means with Larry Allen, principal of Allen Federal Business Partners.

    January 14, 2016
  • Similar to the way the HealthCare.gov debacle sparked reforms to technology management, the Office of Personnel Management data breach is fueling a deep discussion around cloud computing. So much so in fact, a two year effort to develop a bill to make it easier for agencies to migrate to the cloud is on track to be introduced in another six weeks. In the latest installment of his weekly Reporter's Notebook, executive editor Jason Miller writes about the cloud bill and why it has good chance of becoming law.

    January 12, 2016
  • A few federal employees and military officers got caught when the big Ashley Madison data breach came out last year. Bet they wish that data had been encrypted. Ditto for the IRS and Office of Personnel Management, both of which lost control of data on millions of people. Encryption is getting a new look by many chief information security officers now. Leo Guthart, chairman of Security First Corporation, Federal Drive with Tom Temin an industry update.

    January 12, 2016
  • The Education Department holds personal data on almost half of the people in the United States. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said the department’s databases are vulnerable and could lead to the biggest cyber breach ever. Federal News Radio Scott Maucione shares more on what's going on with the Education Department on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

    January 11, 2016
  • The Senate IT working group is circulating a discussion draft of a cloud bill to improve FedRAMP and create a new fund at GSA to help pay for cloud transitions.

    January 11, 2016
  • The most read reporter's notebooks in 2015 had a variety of topics, but cybersecurity and personnel changes seemed to be most popular.

    January 11, 2016

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