The U.S. and the European Union have amended their data transfer pact that seeks to heighten regulation of cross-border personal information transfers by companies, Reuters reported Friday.

Julia Fioretti writes the new version of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement was sent to European member states for review ahead of a scheduled vote on the deal early next month.

Regulators in Washington and Brussels crafted the agreement after the European Court of Justice nullified the International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles on concerns over the U.S. government’s mass surveillance activities, according to the report.

The report said U.S. and European businesses transfer data related to payroll and human resources as well as information for targeted online advertising.

The U.S. and Israel have reached an agreement that seeks to expand cyber defense collaboration between the two countries through sharing of cyber threat information.

The Department of Homeland Security and Israel’s national cybersecurity authority will work to establish networks and processes in an effort to facilitate cyber threat data exchanges under the joint declaration, the Israeli government said in a news release published Tuesday.

Israel will also participate in DHS’ Automated Indicator Sharing program that aims to develop an automated platform that will work to help government agencies and industry share data on network vulnerabilities in real time.

Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary at DHS, and Suzanne Spaulding, undersecretary for DHS’ national protection and programs directorate, signed the agreement with Israel’s cybersecurity officials Eviatar Matania and Buky Carmeli at the 6th Annual International Cybersecurity Conference in Israel.

“Just as we proselytize the sharing of information domestically, we proselytize it in the international arena as well,” Mayorkas said in his remarks Monday at the conference.

“[Information] must be shared between and among countries through the computer emergency response teams in CERT-to-CERT relationships and otherwise,” he added.

The Energy Department‘s Energy Sciences Network and the National Science Foundation‘s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence have organized a working group tasked to develop a threat profile for open science organizations.

ESnet said Wednesday the working group comprises scientists and security professionals from HUBzero, iRods, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Northwestern University, University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“The goal of this effort is to provide tailored guidance to the science community on the threats to science assets and the consequences of those threats to the science mission,” said Sean Peisert, a staff scientist at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“This information will provide a basic knowledge framework to expedite managing those threats for the wide portfolio of open science projects,” Peisert added.

ESnet, funded by DOE’s Office of Science and managed by LBNL, supports more than 40 department-owned  research facilities as well as collaborates with approximately 140 research and commercial organizations worldwide.

The General Services Administration‘s Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program team has unveiled a set of high baseline requirements for agencies to protect unclassified sensitive government data stored in cloud environments.

FedRAMP said Friday three authorized cloud offerings from Amazon Web Services, CSRA and Microsoft meet the program’s high baseline requirements.

The products are AWS’ GovCloud technology, CSRA’s ARC-P infrastructure-as-a-service platform and Microsoft’s Azure GovCloud system.

FedRAMP noted 80 percent of government data are categorized at low and moderate impact levels and that rate accounts only for 50 percent of overall federal spending on information technology programs.

The new security requirements seek to give way for the other half of the nearly $80 billion in annual government investments on IT systems that could potentially migrate to cloud infrastructure, according to FedRAMP.