Two prominent tech-sector trade groups said Tuesday that planned trade agreement talks between the U.S. and the European Union, United Kingdom, and Japan should prioritize easing cross-border data flows and barring requirements to compel the transfer of technology, source code, and encryption keys. […]

Federal Deputy CIO Margie Graves said today that the forthcoming update to the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) Initiative is coming “extraordinarily soon.” With the update, there seems to be an acknowledgment that the former ways of TIC–now over a decade old–will be yielding, including the TIC architecture often seen as expensive and inflexible to cloud technologies. […]

Health insurance provider Anthem has agreed to pay the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR) $16 million to settle what HHS called “potential violations” of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in connection with an Anthem data breach in late 2014 and early 2015 in which cyber criminals stole data on nearly 79 million individuals including names, Social Security numbers, medical identification numbers, and email addresses, among others.   […]

As Federal agencies continue to amass vast amounts of data, it’s inevitable that some portion of it won’t hold a ton of value to an agency’s mission. It could be a simple email to schedule your next meeting, or it could be notes scribbled on a Word document and stashed on an agency server. Outside of its immediate use at that point in time, there’s not a strong need to store it in perpetuity. […]

The Pentagon confirmed on Friday a cyber breach that compromised personal and credit card information of military and civilian personnel. […]

Three Senate Democrats asked Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Joseph Simons in an Oct. 10 letter to open an investigation into Google’s disclosure earlier this week that it discovered and patched in March a vulnerability in its Google+ social media platform that may have exposed profile data on up to 500,000 accounts, but did not inform users of the vulnerability in a timely way. […]

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee heard testimony today detailing the workings of data privacy laws in Europe and California–specifically the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)–amid a growing groundswell for Congress to work on a national data privacy law for the U.S. […]

Google released their framework for privacy legislation, which highlights providing transparency, securing personal information, and giving people access to their personal information as key requirements of a data regulation framework. […]

Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., has introduced a consumer data privacy bill that would require online service providers to provide “opt-in” rights to consumers whose “sensitive personal information or behavioral data” they collect, store, process, sell, or share with third parties. […]

Jane Wiseman, senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, has authored a new report–published Tuesday by the IBM Center for the Business of Government–that finds an apparent lack of chief data officers (CDO) among Federal agencies. […]

Federal agencies are looking to gain actionable intelligence and information from disparate data sources in a secure, scalable, and efficient manner. An emerging technology known as a big data fabric could provide those agencies with a unified platform “that accelerates insights by automating ingestion, curation, discovery, preparation, and integration from data silos,” according to Forrester Research. […]

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) technology budget is vast. At just over $4 billion, it exceeds most Federal agencies’ technology budgets, and in some cases, dwarfs entire operational budgets. […]

A new study released today by MeriTalk and underwritten by Pure Storage finds that Federal agencies are highly aware of challenges they face in harnessing and analyzing data, and that artificial intelligence (AI) offers an opportunity to change how government handles and processes data. […]

Federal IT leaders discussed the ways their organizations are tackling the proliferation of more and more endpoints on Federal networks at MeriTalk’s Cyber Security Brainstorm Thursday. In particular, ever-increasing mobile connectivity is creating the potential for further headaches, but the officials advised that next-gen technologies and proper network and data governance provide avenues to expand the ways employees work without compromising security at the network edge. […]

MeriTalk today announced the winners of its inaugural FITARA Awards program, recognizing six Federal agencies who have made tremendous strides in modernizing their IT environments and one congressional leader who has worked tirelessly to promote the reform of IT acquisitions and adoption of cyber best practices. […]

Obstacles to data sharing are holding back the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) in Federal agencies. However, the use cases and potential of AI makes it worth the struggle, according to experts. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report today finding that three-quarters of major Federal agencies maintain incomplete, untimely, inaccurate, or poor-quality spending data, and that around half of them are not even implementing required data standards in the first place. […]

Following a July 16 letter by former government officials requesting disclosure of 2020 Census cybersecurity policies, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a statement today affirming its “robust cybersecurity program” and ensuring interested parties that cybersecurity remains paramount at the bureau. However, it said it was declining to reveal all of its encryption policies “as a matter of data security.” […]

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the General Accountability Office (GAO) isn’t fully compliant with the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA), according to a report released yesterday. […]

A large group of former Federal government officials–including national security and other experts from the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Justice–urged Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross in a letter released yesterday to disclose the 2020 Census’ data protection and cybersecurity policies. […]

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]

There are many emerging technologies designed to help Federal managers optimize their data centers and operate their information technology infrastructures more efficiently. But with so many new choices, how do agencies pick the best solutions? […]

Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced 14 bills out of its business meeting today, including legislation to protect against drone threats and to establish a framework for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that will improve data sharing across DHS’s numerous component agencies. […]

The possibilities of quantum computing have been floating on the horizon for a while now, at least since renowned physicist Richard Feynman dreamed up the idea in 1982. But like the horizon itself (at least in a world that isn’t flat), it always seems to recede despite all efforts to close in on it. Until now. […]

With the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) formally signing on last month to adopt the same electronic health records system as the Department of Defense (DoD), the two agencies are putting a lot of chips on a solution to a problem that history suggests is pretty risky. […]

We’re witnessing momentous developments in government technology. The Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act promises new incentives for agencies that can prove they’re maximizing government funds to bring about IT transformation. […]

It’s not exactly the heist of the century, but the FDIC has stirred up a bit of controversy. Departing FDIC employees downloaded their family photos, personal emails, and the sensitive data of over 100,000 bank customers–oops. Instead of reporting to Congress, the agency stayed mum for months. This earned the agency a strict chiding from their IG in the form of a special inquiry issued on April 16. Fa    […]

A new study finds that the public is warming up to the use of biometric identification technology, but remains wary of tracking applications and is looking to government to set standards in that area. […]

A bill introduced in the House on Thursday would create a series of minimum functionality and security requirements for all Federal government agency public-facing websites and digital services. […]