The Defense Department’s (DoD) award to Microsoft of its 10-year Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) contract for general purpose cloud computing in October 2019 was not influenced by pressure from the White House, according to a report issued today by the DoD’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). […]

Public sector organization can’t bet on luck when it comes to the cloud, but smart helps – specifically OMB’s Cloud Smart policy, according to MeriTalk’s newly released “Smart > Lucky: Pillars to Fed and SLED Cloud Success” report. […]

Sue Gordon, who stepped down last year as principal deputy director for National Intelligence, has reached a consulting arrangement with Microsoft. […]

Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, applauded the Federal government’s handling earlier this week of public disclosure by the intelligence community of serious vulnerabilities it found in Microsoft’s Windows 10 and Service 2016 products, for which the company released patches. […]

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) that took effect earlier this week will not only erect a higher data privacy bar for citizens of the state, but also may put an important policy stake in the ground for Federal lawmakers who are weighing nationwide data privacy legislation. […]

Amazon Web Services plans to protest the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) decision to award the contract for its Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) cloud program to Microsoft, according to a statement from a company spokesperson. […]

Microsoft said on Nov. 11 that it will “honor” throughout its U.S. operations the “core protections” contained in the California Consumer Privacy Act that is set to take effect in January 2020. […]

The Pentagon’s award late last week of its ten-year Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) contract for general purpose cloud computing to Microsoft took center stage on Capitol Hill today at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to consider the nomination of Dana Deasy as the Defense Department’s (DoD) CIO. […]

The Department of Defense has awarded its 10-year, $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) contract for general purpose cloud computing to Microsoft, setting the stage for the department’s cloud strategy to take effect. […]

Microsoft announced Oct. 18 that it launched a bug bounty program for ElectionGuard, its free open-source software development kit (SDK) which aims to make voting more secure, transparent, and accessible. […]

The CyberPeace Institute, an independent non-governmental organization (NGO), launched Sept. 26 with the mission to “assist vulnerable communities, promote transparency, and advance global discussions on acceptable behavior in cyberspace.” […]

Microsoft announced Sept. 20 that it is extending free security support for Federally certified voting systems running Windows 7 through the 2020 election. Microsoft had previously announced it was ceasing to support Windows 7. […]

An August 5 alert issued by Microsoft’s Security Response Center is blowing the whistle on hacking efforts focused on three classes of internet of things (IoT) devices that Microsoft asserts are being attacked by the hacking group it identifies as “Strontium,” better known as the Russia-based cyber espionage group Fancy Bear. […]

Microsoft announced July 29 that it acquired BlueTalon, a data privacy firm. […]

The Cybersecurity Tech Accord (CTA) announced May 9 that 16 new companies have signed on to the agreement, bringing the total to more than 106 signatories one year after its creation.  […]

Microsoft is getting into the SparkNotes game with its latest project. In an April 23 blog post, Microsoft explained that it is using AI to help decode 19 plays from William Shakespeare in an attempt “to shine a new light on some of the greatest pieces of literature, as well as make them more accessible to people who worry the plays are too complex to easily understand.” […]

Microsoft is building two cloud-based data centers to host classified government data, according to an April 17 news release. […]

Microsoft confirmed this week that its webmail services were victim to a data breach through the first three months of 2019. […]

The Department of Defense has narrowed the competition for its $10 billion, Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract to a choice between Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, according to a DoD spokesperson. […]

Microsoft hit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with a filing last week claiming that the Commission has overstated actual broadband availability in the United States and should do better to address coverage gaps. […]

The Cybersecurity Tech Accord announced yesterday that it has added 11 new companies to its pledge, bringing its total to 90 signatories. AnchorFree, Domain Tools, Flowmon Networks, MarkMonitor, NTT, Paladion, Percipiet.ai, Silent Breach, Tanium, Telecom Italia, and Unisys all signed on and pledged to “defend customers everywhere from malicious attacks by cybercriminal enterprises and nation-states.” […]

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that the mobile version of its Microsoft Outlook platform would be available to all Federal customers after updates to its platform met high-level compliance standards with the Department of Defense (DoD). […]

Industry partners would like more clarity and more Federal support of artificial intelligence (AI) as part of the upcoming update to the 2016 National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan. This request came in the recently released responses to the request for information for the update. […]

Federal officials are looking at 2019 as the year of the hybrid cloud, as agencies shift from the Cloud First policy of moving pell-mell into as-a-service models to the Cloud Smart policy, which focuses more on making cloud work with legacy systems and serving agency missions. […]

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, today urged the U.S. and other governments to take legislative action to shape legal frameworks for the use of facial recognition technologies. […]

Microsoft today announced that it plans to expand its rural broadband initiative, dubbed the Airband initiative, to reach an additional 1 million rural Americans. […]

The Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace–a global cyber pact introduced last month at the Paris Peace Forum by French President Emmanuel Macron–now has more than 420 signatories, including countries, companies, and non-profit organizations and advocacy groups. […]

With a new session of Congress–and a power shift in the House–looming in January, big tech companies are looking toward 2019 and possible new privacy legislation that will alter the shape of their business models. […]

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, pledged in a blog post late last week that the company will “proactively” engage with the Federal government to “advocate for policies and laws that will ensure that AI [artificial intelligence] and other new technologies are used responsibly and ethically.” […]

Yesterday two academics proposed creating an international organization modeled after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), that would “provide assistance and relief to vulnerable citizens and enterprises affected by serious cyberattacks.” […]