Page 6 - Data Gov News Today

Over the last year, cyber criminals tried to acquire information related to the virus and possible vaccines or extort the health care industry, according to a new report said.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is using simulation technology that collects publicly available data from multiple sources and overlays it on a map so that firefighters can predict a blaze’s behavior in real time.

By Anthony Robbins Feb 17, 2021 The United States leads the world in military assets with 40,000 armored vehicles, 13,000 aircraft and nearly 500 ships. Maintaining all these assets to ensure they’re combat-ready costs the Defense Department an estimated $71 billion annually. The sustainment for just one program -- the F-35 Lightning II fighter -- is projected to cost a whopping $1 trillion over the next 60 years. Sustainment is not only expensive, it’s essential for safety. We’ve lost 22...

By Jan Lemnitzer Feb 18, 2021 In the past five years, ransomware attacks have evolved from rare misfortunes into common and disruptive threats. Hijacking the IT systems of organizations and forcing them to pay a ransom in order to reclaim them, cybercriminals are freely extorting millions of pounds from companies – and they’re enjoying a remarkably low risk of arrest as they do it. At the moment, there is no coordinated response to ransomware attacks, despite their ever-increasing prevalenc...

Feb 17, 2021 When the Census Bureau announced that the data states use for redistricting would be delayed, many states plans were thrown for a loop. Between complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, new technology to protect privacy and security and the Trump administration’s shifting deadlines, the release of the redistricting data will delayed until Sept. 30. That data includes the details on race, ethnicity, voting age, housing occupancy status at the census block level – all of whi...

Security experts understand the desire of entrepreneurs and election officials to use new voting methods to reach voters who may be disenfranchised by in-person or mail-in voting, but the security risk might be too great, they say.

By Stephanie Kanowitz Feb 11, 2021 A public/private partnership in Tucson, Ariz., is closing the digital divide by not only connecting more than 32,000 of the city’s 212,000 households without reliable internet access, but also powering up Tucson’s smart city strategy. The city and Insight Enterprises are within weeks of completing Phase I of a municipal wireless broadband solution using the Citizen Broadband Radio Service network, a band of radio-frequency spectrum from 3.5 GHz to 3.7 GHz ...

The Defense Department is working with the General Services Administration to work out reciprocity between the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program.

Feb 12, 2021 When the sheriff of Oldsmar, Fla., held a press conference to discuss a Feb. 5 hack into the water treatment facility that could have poisoned the city’s water supply, many cybersecurity experts stood up and took notice. The intruder seemed to have breached the plant’s industrial controls via a remote desktop monitoring application and may have taken advantage other cybersecurity weaknesses, such as lax password security and use of an unsupported operating system.  That access...

By Mike Shrader Feb 12, 2021 The pandemic forced government agencies to adapt rapidly. During the past 12 months, government IT teams have been busy enabling remote work, implementing cloud migration and digital transformation projects and securing an ever-expanding perimeter. Yet while 2020 ushered in significant change from a federal IT perspective, it’s merely the beginning. Mega-trends like elastic cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and the internet of things were convergi...