Top Federal technology leaders discussed the pressing need to address tech-sector workforce shortages at General Dynamics Information Technology’s Emerge 2021 digital modernization conference on April 6. GDIT President Amy Gilliland and Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat both tackled the issue in keynote addresses and pointed to its importance in both the private and public sectors. […]
MeriTalk recently caught up with Ray McCay, vice president of solution sales, ViON Corporation, and Eric Trexler, vice president of global governments and critical infrastructure, Forcepoint, to discuss multi-cloud security risks, success factors, and how Federal IT teams can move from a reactive stance to a more proactive security posture in multi-cloud environments.
Government agencies and the private sector will spend $100 billion or more to recover from the SolarWinds hack, which went undetected for at least nine months and may have compromised 18,000 government and private sector organizations using SolarWinds Orion software. Even if breached organizations successfully mitigate the damage from SolarWinds, they know adversaries aren’t going to stop trying to get in. If they plug one vector of attack, the adversary will find another to exploit.
In response to a sharp spike in IT services and cybersecurity demands for a dispersed workforce, President Joe Biden made Federal technology modernization one of his early priorities, citing the need to upgrade Federal IT as “an urgent national security issue.”
During the nine months of the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve asked a hundred variations of that question to people whose professional lives near the tip of the technology spear put them in good positions to predict the future and get as many good answers back. At the dawn of a more hopeful 2021, here’s a look at how the Federal work-scape may play out in the longer term, courtesy of three veteran technologists.
The Department of Commerce Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced last month that it will be conducting a review of the department’s cyber threat data sharing capabilities, pursuant to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 which set up structures for sharing threat data with government and private sector entities.
The Department of Defense (DoD) Prototypes and Experiments office is looking for submissions ahead of a solutions meeting that the office expects to hold in late spring 2021, according to a Dec. 22 release.
The Alliance for Digital Innovation (ADI), a Washington-based trade group known for its advocacy for Federal government IT modernization, released a new set of recommendations Dec. 17 for the Biden administration and incoming Congress to improve Federal tech capabilities by learning from some of the lessons of the government’s rapid turn to telework during the coronavirus pandemic.
The shift to remote work forced by the coronavirus pandemic has helped the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) – a component of Army Futures Command – identify security gaps, and work to improve IT security for offsite personnel, said Col. Gregory Smith, Military Deputy to the Director of the CCDC, at an AFFIRM webinar Dec. 16.
Senior executives with Google Cloud emphasized at their first Public Sector Summit on Dec. 8 the work that the company has been doing with a variety of public sector organizations during the coronavirus pandemic, and one emerging silver lining to the health crisis: a big leap forward in IT modernization that will help government and academia during the recovery.
Three tech-sector veterans, in conjunction with MeriTalk, will cut through the confusion about an important aspect of the new tech environment – the virtual desktop experience – during a virtual tech briefing set for Wednesday, Oct. 14, from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm Eastern time. The complementary briefing will explain how to make the virtual desktop experience productive, efficient, and safe.
Weeks after the Department of Defense announced additional mid-band spectrum would be available for industry use, the department is circling back to industry requesting more information on spectrum sharing.
A new study shows that the transition to 5G wireless services will create an additional 4.6 million jobs in the United States by 2034 – and that the move to the latest generation of wireless technology has created over 100,000 jobs already since last year.
Denver-based communications services provider CenturyLink said it is changing its name to Lumen Technologies.
Another piece of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification puzzle has fallen into place with the Accreditation Body announcing 11 companies as Licensed Partner Publishers who will develop curricula for the Department of Defense’s new cybersecurity standard for its supply chain companies.
Nine more companies have joined the Open RAN Policy Coalition, bringing the total number of members to 54. The coalition, formed in May, is seeking to promote policies to open up the radio access networks– a key part of the architecture necessary for 5G wireless services.
With the White House and Department of Defense recently announcing that additional mid-band spectrum will be made available to be shared with industry, the Federal government’s spectrum manager called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to do its part to ensure the partnership occurs smoothly.
The Information Technology Industry Council this week released its guide for cybersecurity certification, which includes a warning against a “one-size-fits-all solution” in certification.
Leaders on spectrum issues both on and off the Hill praised the Department of Defense’s announcement to make additional mid-band spectrum available for commercial use, lauding the decision’s potential effects for industry and government.
Amb. Robert Strayer, the Department of State’s point person for cyber and international communications policy, is leaving government to join the Information Technology Industry (ITI) Council, a global technology trade association.
The Virginia-based company Ligado announced it is joining the Open RAN Policy Coalition, a group created to promote policies of openness and interoperability in a key part of the architecture used by mobile devices particularly for 5G use.
Verizon has hired Jennifer Chronis to lead its Verizon Public Sector business beginning next month.
Google’s Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai told employees in an email that the company will extend its voluntary work-from-home option through June 2021.
Nokia, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and U.S. Cellular joined the ranks of Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon in the Open RAN Policy Coalition, formed last month to promote policies for openness and interoperability in a key part of the architecture used for 5G. The June 12 announcement of 14 new members brings the total number of companies in the coalition to 45.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) hired Mojdeh Bahar, former assistant administrator for technology transfer at the Department of Agriculture’s Research Service, as the second associate director for innovation and industry services (ADIIS), per a May 22 press release.
Over 30 technology companies, including Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon, formed a coalition to promote policies for openness and interoperability in a key part of the architecture used by mobile devices, particularly for 5G use.
Southern Telecom, Inc., which provides services throughout the southeastern United States, named Michael Britt as President and CEO Tuesday.
Industry leaders shared their predictions for 2020 and beyond with MeriTalk, indicating the path to progress will often track uphill, and around plenty of curves.
While figures vary across industry and government as to the size of the “phishing-prone” population in any organization, both sides agree that sustained internal employee training efforts are necessary to cut the success rate of spear-phishing exploits down to more manageable levels.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is tackling managed service provider (MSPs) cybersecurity by developing a customizable reference model that MSPs can adapt to fit their program needs.