The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told Federal agencies in a March 20 memo to work with their Federal contractors, “if they haven’t already, to evaluate and maximize telework for contractor employees, wherever possible” during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. […]

President Trump on Feb. 28 named Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, as his nominee for Director of National Intelligence, a job that has been vacant since Dan Coats resigned last August. […]

Yesterday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., sent letters to various healthcare groups to seek information on ways to best improve cybersecurity within the healthcare industry. […]

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on Friday reintroduced the Modernizing the Trusted Workforce for the 21st Century Act, which would overhaul the Federal government’s security clearance process and tackle the government’s backlog of pending security clearance investigations. […]

Apple CEO Tim Cook yesterday called for the Federal Trade Commission to take a larger role in protecting online consumer data by creating and overseeing a data-broker clearinghouse under which all brokers would have to register so that consumers could track how their data has been sold or deleted. […]

The Senate Intelligence Committee released two reports on Monday finding that Russian social media influence operations–which came to broad attention in the U.S. following the 2016 presidential election–are still ongoing in the U.S. […]

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on Dec. 6 introduced a bill that aims to modernize the Federal government’s security clearance system and reduce the government’s backlog of security clearances which the senator said now stands at about 600,000. […]

Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said Monday in a letter to Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., that DoJ reached a premature conclusion in stating that stolen personal information used in a credit fraud case in Virginia was acquired from the 2015 Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data breach. […]

Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said at a hearing today that the Federal government’s focus going forward should be to “prevent and deter” interference with U.S. elections like that perpetrated by the Russian government in 2016, and to “harden” election infrastructure against future interference from Russia and other malicious parties. […]

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. […]

Following the release of a report to President Trump on the increasing threat of botnets, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Thursday that the government is not doing enough to force the private sector to build better security into Internet of Things (IoT) devices. […]

A group of 19 Democratic senators today urged John Bolton, President Trump’s National Security Advisor, to reverse course on his decision earlier this month to eliminate the White House cybersecurity coordinator position. […]

Members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee voiced support this week for legislation to require greater corporate disclosure of cybersecurity preparedness, and relayed concerns that personally identifiable information (PII) collected by government and private sector entities cannot be adequately safeguarded against theft or loss. […]