Former White House cyber guru Melissa Hathaway, who most recently called on Congress to take action on key cybersecurity initiatives, spoke before the American National Standards Institute about continuing cyber developments. Hathaway, who is the president of Hathaway Global Strategies and is also a senior adviser at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and [...]

Speaking at a meeting of The Wall Street Journal CEO Council, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the recent partnership between the Department of Homeland Security, a civilian agency, and the Defense Department’s National Security Agency would lead to better Internet security. Gates said his hope is that the partnership, which allows for sharing of [...]

Workers in federal agencies who travel frequently are increasingly checking the web before hitting the road. But it’s not to confirm flights or check traffic. According to a report in Federal Times, agencies are using a new web-based tool from the General Services Administration that allows travel managers to pick the best geographical location for [...]

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Transportation Security Agency Administrator John Pistole announced their agencies would help expand the “If You See Something, Say Something,” public awareness campaign for the holiday season. The expanded efforts come as the transportation systems prepare for an influx of travelers for the holiday season and as DHS [...]

A new hire at the Information Sharing Environment, tasked with increasing national security information sharing, is help to fill out the relatively new agency. Mike Howell will join the Information Sharing Environment as the agency’s deputy program manager, Federal News Radio reports. Howell, who will leave his current position working with federal Chief Information Officer [...]

With all the attention and outrage over the Department of Homeland Security’s full-body scanners now in place at airports around the country, another technology seems to have slipped under the radar. Biometrics describes systems that collect data – fingerprints, for example – and then match them to an information bank of stored data. Fingerprint biometrics [...]

As cloud computing in the federal computing increasingly takes flight, some observers remain worried about security of information stored on a cloud platform. Just a few weeks ago, the General Services Administration and the Chief Information Officers Council unveiled the new security guidelines for cloud computing, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. FedRAMP, as [...]

Federal agencies must review their service contractors by June 2011 to determine if  federal workers and contractors are “effectively balanced.” Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Daniel I. Gordon released a memo last week detailing the guidelines civilian agencies should follow to conduct reviews of their service contractors. “A service contract inventory is [...]

The Wall Street Journal reports the Obama administration will announce a new “stepped-up” strategy for dealing with online privacy, including a privacy watchdog, when the Commerce Department releases a new report in the coming weeks. The news comes just a few weeks after the White House announced the creation of an Internet privacy subcommittee, involving [...]

Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget Jeffrey Zients will offer tips on reforming federal IT projects to close the IT gap between the government and private industry when he keynotes an event this week for the Northern Virginia Technology Council. Zients, who is also the U.S. chief performance officer, provided a glimpse [...]