In another effort from Congress to expand transparency in U.S. election systems after, Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. announced today that they will reintroduce their Election Systems Integrity Act. […]

National Security Agency (NSA) Senior Adviser Rob Joyce said yesterday that any move to regulate social media platforms would have to start with quicker and more efficient connections between policy makers and policy enforcers such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but also warned that any effective regulation of social media platforms would be difficult to achieve in the U.S. […]

FBI Director Christopher Wray underscored that the private sector plays a pivotal role in helping the FBI counter cyberthreats at during a talk at the RSA Conference today, adding that the bureau has worked to build relationships with private companies to do so. […]

Multiple tech-related issues including cybersecurity, social media manipulation, and intellectual property theft took center stage today at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing featuring six U.S. intelligence organization chiefs fielding senators’ questions about threats to the country from adversaries who they said are becoming more dangerous as they better understand and use technology. […]

The American Civil Liberties Union announced on Dec. 21 that it filed suit in Federal district court for the Western District of New York seeking disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) into how seven Federal agencies conduct what ACLU characterized as “hacking” operations into phones, computers, and other devices. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) today announced the seizure of 15 domains associated with distributed denial-of-service-for-hire services, as well as criminal charges against three individuals who facilitated the domains. […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ), citing the increased number of cybercrimes being tackled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has doubled its broad goal of FBI actions to combat cyberattacks in FY 2019, although FY 2018 statistics indicate that the FBI could end up handling a much heavier workload than that.   […]

The Department of Justice said today it indicted eight people from Russia and Kazakhstan allegedly involved in two cybercriminal rings engaged in digital advertising fraud. […]

William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, made a spirited plea today for Federal government and private sector organizations to take additional steps to address cybersecurity and include operations at all levels in an “enterprise-wide security apparatus.” […]

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, alongside the Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Homeland Security, released a joint statement today that expresses their concern over election interference and calls identification and prevention of interference a “top priority for the Federal government.” […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released an update for the agency’s $5 billion Information Technology Supplies and Support Services (ITSSS) contract, announcing that the agency would opt for vendors under the General Services Administration’s IT Schedule 70 and thus changing the agency’s initial strategy of an open and full recompete. […]

At the National Association of Corporate Directors Global Board Leaders Summit on Monday, Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Director Christopher Wray stressed that the FBI and corporate executives must work together to keep companies safe from cybercrime. Wray called on executives to report cyber incidents to the FBI as soon as possible, explaining that the FBI needed the info to have a clear understanding of the current threat landscape. […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) yesterday issued a warning that cyber actors are increasingly exploiting the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to conduct malicious activity. […]

Trent Teyema, chief of cyber readiness and cyber division chief operating officer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has left the FBI for a role in the private sector. Teyema will be joining the Parsons Corporation as senior vice president and chief technology officer for the company’s Federal business, Parsons announced on Thursday. […]

The FBI wants to use artificial intelligence to add a new layer to its Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, specifically to counteract the increasingly common practice of criminals altering their fingerprints. […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a new webpage focusing on combating foreign influence campaigns. […]

The Department of Homeland Security on Aug. 13-15 hosted “Tabletop the Vote 2018: DHS’ National Election Cyber Exercise,” which invited vendors and Federal, state and local election officials to participate in election security preparation. […]

Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said today that the billions of dollars the U.S. government and private sector spend each year on cybersecurity are not being properly and efficiently utilized unless government and industry wrap human resources departments tightly into security discussions. […]

Even as Apple went public yesterday with a new mobile device operating system intended to close security loopholes that law enforcement agencies were using to access locked devices, one digital forensics firm said it found a workaround to bypass the new security features for a cost of about forty bucks. […]

Howard Marshall, deputy assistant director of the cyber division at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said Thursday at MeriTalk’s Akamai Government Forum that the bureau is taking a proactive approach to defending and apprehending when it comes to cyber criminals. […]

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. […]

House members on Thursday reintroduced a bipartisan bill that would prevent states from requiring technology companies to include encryption “backdoors” in their products that would allow governments to access data stored on those products. […]

Agencies need to leverage digital recruiting initiatives and enhanced data techniques to better attract talented and diverse personnel, according to human relations professionals at several Federal agencies speaking at a FedInsider webinar held May 31. […]

The world over, folks ask the same two questions every day–what’s for dinner, and what’s the weather forecast? In the government IT space, every day we’re all asking about the cloud forecast. A recent report from P&S Market Research provides new insights on the global government’s cloud appetites. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) rare public alert last week about a large-scale Russian cyber campaign targeting U.S. infrastructure raised a piercing alarm about vulnerabilities in the nation’s power grid, and underscored what officials have meant when talking about the need for a whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach to cyber defense. Protecting against a major attack, managing the damage once one hits, and responding to an attack are beyond the reach of any one agency or sector, they argue; the job requires concerted efforts from the public and private sectors. […]

It appears that the improved reliability and security of cloud computing is attracting more law enforcement agencies. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the latest agency looking to migrate applications to a commercial cloud provider. […]

About five years ago, many law enforcement officials wondered if the cloud was safe enough to hold their data. Now the FBI, the nation’s top law enforcement agency, is considering a move to a large-scale, commercial software cloud provider. […]

The FBI fell far short of its own goals for fighting cybercrime in 2017, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) audit. The FBI reported disrupting or dismantling 262 high-level criminal operations targeting global U.S. interests, only about half of its goal of 500, and roughly one-tenth of the 2,492 cybercrime operations it broke up in 2014. […]

The FBI currently has a backlog of nearly 7,000 crime-connected phones that its experts are unable to crack. And it’s going to get much worse, law enforcement leaders say. […]

The FBI needs access to encrypted files in order to protect the nation against cyber crime, according to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. “Encryption is essential,” Rosenstein said “It is a foundational element of data security and authentication. It is central to the growth and flourishing of the digital economy. We in law enforcement have no desire to undermine encryption. But ‘warrant-proof’ encryption poses a serious problem.” […]