The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) has announced the election of Allison Lerner as the group’s new chairperson, effective in January. […]
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) completed a website redesign for ease of access on Dec. 3, according to a press release from FDIC OIG communications specialist Caitlin McDaniel. The site houses audits, investigations, and reports completed by the department, and now includes filters to sort through those reports easier. The site is also home to joint press releases with the Department of Justice about investigations into the banking sector. […]
The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that it will allow state, local, territorial, and tribal task force officers to use body-worn cameras on Federal task forces nationwide. […]
U.S. policy-makers and several close foreign allies issued a statement this weekend calling for technology providers to provide access for governments and law enforcement to encrypted data and protected systems. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today reported results of its review of Federal agency efforts to reduce IT contracts duplication, and found that four of the seven agencies reviewed had fully or partially taken recommended steps to regularly identify potential contract duplication. […]
Former Virginia-based Federal contracting executive Brodie S. Thomson was sentenced to 42 months in prison following his guilty plea in June in a $4.1 million fraud scheme that involved soliciting bribes and receiving financial kickbacks in connection with prime government contracts and subcontracts awarded to a firm where he was a senior executive. […]
In a coordinated effort across three district courts, the Department of Justice unsealed indictments this week in three separate cases against Iran-based individuals all alleged to have committed cyber intrusions on U.S.-based networks. […]
Ron Ross has seen a lot during his 30-year career in cybersecurity, so asking him to pinpoint new cyber threats is a little like asking Tom Brady to talk about a blitz he has not faced during his NFL tenure. […]
The nation’s lead election security agency in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it has not seen any attacks on voter registration databases or voting systems this year. […]
The Department of Justice (DoJ) announced Aug. 26 that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York has entered a consent decree imposing a permanent injunction which bars two individuals and two companies from conveying any telephone calls into the U.S. telephone system. The two individuals are spouses Nicholas and Natasha Palumbo, and their companies, Ecommerce National LLC and SIP Retail. […]
Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen urged Americans this week to participate fully in the democratic process and realize that the fear of “malign influence” on elections are as old as the country itself. […]
The U.S. Department of Justice announced charges against two Chinese nationals for hacking into computer systems and stealing intellectual property and business information over more than a 10-year period. […]
IT leaders across the Federal government are reviewing lessons learned from the past few months. Most acknowledge that agencies have significantly accelerated modernization efforts as part of their work to effectively support (and secure) mass telework environments. […]
Attorney General William Barr said today that China had plans to “dominate the world’s digital infrastructure,” calling artificial intelligence a main part of China’s “drive for technological supremacy.” […]
The cyber agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking to fix 75 percent of Federal agencies critical network vulnerabilities within 30 days of their discovery, according to a goal in the July 2020 update to the President’s Management Agenda […]
The Department of Justice announced that a Russian national was sentenced on June 26 to nine years in prison for operating two websites devoted to the facilitation of payment card fraud, computer hacking, and other related crimes. […]
A leader of the international cybercrime organization Infraud – a group responsible for more than $568 million in financial losses – pleaded guilty to Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act charges on June 26. […]
Brodie S. Thomson, a former Virginia-based Federal contracting executive, last week admitted guilt for his actions in a $4.1 million fraud scheme that centered on soliciting bribes and receiving financial kickbacks in connection with prime government contracts and subcontracts awarded to a firm for which he served as senior vice president. […]
As the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to affect organizations across the United States, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) warned of common trends and attack vectors that are being used by malicious actors for financial or informational gain. […]
“One of the things that we are trying to do with our indictments, and that we’ve been trying to do for a number of years, is to establish norms of nation-state behavior in cyberspace,” said John Demers, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice. […]
Nick Ward, Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of Justice (DoJ), said the agency is proceeding “full steam ahead” on efforts to explore adoption of zero trust security models, with the more distributed nature of DoJ’s workforce in the coronavirus pandemic providing impetus to that effort. […]
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, just 40 percent of Federal and only 4 percent of State and Local government employees were authorized to telework. But since then, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is mandating that Federal agencies maximize telework across the nation, and many SLGs are doing the same. Embracing telework – and doing it right – is a government-wide priority. […]
A cyber intrusion that occurred at the U.S. Marshals Service in December 2019 exposed 387,000 individuals’ names, addresses, birth dates, and social security numbers to attackers, an agency spokesperson confirmed to MeriTalk yesterday. […]
The Office of Justice Programs at the Department of Justice (DoJ) is fast tracking its new grants database due to the coronavirus pandemic. […]
Here’s an overview of some of the latest COVID-19 coronavirus developments on the government and tech fronts: […]
An executive order signed by President Trump on April 4 creates a formal Federal agency structure to scrutinize applications by foreign entities to acquire U.S.-based telecommunications assets, the Department of Justice said (DoJ) on April 7. […]
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on behalf of five Federal employees who seek to earn hazardous pay bumps of 25 percent due to exposure to the coronavirus while on the job. […]
The $2 trillion measure approved by the Senate last night to help stimulate the flagging U.S. economy and respond to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic will provide hefty increases to the budgets of numerous Federal agencies with major roles in pandemic response and mitigation. […]
The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed enforcement action against operators of a fraudulent COVID-19 coronavirus website March 22 after Attorney General William Barr directed the agency to prioritize the “detection, investigation, and prosecution” of illegal pandemic-related conduct. […]
Attorney General William Barr on March 16 ordered U.S. Attorney’s Offices to prioritize detection and prosecution of coronavirus-related fraud. […]