Page 8 - FCW, August 2020

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Hackers target teleworking feds
With government employees working remotely, cybercriminals and foreign actors have a wider, more vulnerable area to attack, according to a senior federal acquisition official.
Allen Hill, acting deputy assistant commissioner of the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service, said cybersecurity threats are no longer confined to on-premises systems. “We’re getting attacked at endpoints. That’s where they’re trying to come in now,” he said during a Government Executive-sponsored
webcast in July.
He touted artificial
intelligence and machine learning as tools that can help manage network demand and enhance network defense.
“COVID was a wake-up call,” Hill said. “Some agencies were prepared. Others had to adjust
their network infrastructure load. Networks have to adjust to demand in real time, without humans.”
Hill said AI and machine learning technologies must be incorporated into networks and agencies’ security operations centers “as much as practically possible” to help enhance infrastructure and cybersecurity capabilities.
Those technologies can augment defenses by making them faster and more responsive. Likewise, bad cyber actors — including criminals and state- sponsored hackers — are using AI to speed their attacks as technological barriers to accessing those tools come down.
“Agencies have to deploy AI defenses first,” Hill said.
— Mark Rockwell
3.2 million accounts have been created in DOD’s Commercial Virtual Remote Environment as telework surged
Senate Dems join push for boosting TMF to $1B
A group of Democratic senators are asking appropriators to include a six-fold increase to the Technology Modernization Fund in the next round of pandemic relief and stimulus legislation.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) led a letter co-signed by five colleagues urging Senate appropriators to tab $1 billion for the revolving fund authorized by the Modernizing Government Technology Act. The addition would dramatically increase the fund’s capacity to take on new projects. It is currently capitalized at $150 million.
“The federal COVID-19 response has dramatically exposed the failures of outdated, legacy federal IT systems and shone a light on the need for agencies to more quickly modernize their networks,” the lawmakers wrote. They noted that a report from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee “identified multiple agencies where IT systems struggle to accommodate large percentages of teleworking federal employees, causing system problems that slow the place of normal functions like claims processing, increasing security risk, and making telework inefficient and frustrating.”
In May, the House passed the $3
trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, which included $1 billion for the Technology Modernization Fund. The Senate did not act on that bill, but lawmakers are now considering a supplemental appropriation to extend unemployment benefits and provide aid to state and local governments. However, Democrats and Republicans are reportedly not yet close to an agreement on the cost of the package.
The Senate’s relief bill, as released in late July, has some funding for technology, including $1.1 billion in grants to help states modernize unemployment insurance systems and $2 billion to support IRS business systems modernization through the end of fiscal 2025.
The bill also funds an earlier legislative mandate included in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act that lets the Defense Department pay idled contractors. Pentagon officials welcomed the authority but said they didn’t have the money to support it. The Senate bill provides $10.9 billion to pay claims made by contractors under Section 3610 of the act.
— Adam Mazmanian
“We’re getting attacked at endpoints. That’s where they’re trying to come in now.”
— Allen Hill, GSA
Government Matters
@GovMattersTV
The House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act and differences between the two, with @lalaurenista, Staff Writer at @FCWnow, and @smaucioneWFED, Defense Reporter at @FederalNewsNet
9:45 AM · Jul 27, 2020·
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August 2020 FCW.COM