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Key components of the Obama administration's multipronged cybersecurity initiative keep falling into place. One of the most recent developments was the formation of a federal Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. Another was the formal introduction in Congress of the administration's infor...

Information technology -- especially the Internet -- can have a positive impact on the U.S. financial system. Used improperly, however, such tools have the potential to wreak havoc on the financial sector and consumers. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has launched an initiative on the ...

The U.S. government's objectives for improving cybersecurity are taking shape in updated contracting procedures, contracts and projected increases in spending. Several recent developments have underscored the federal commitment to bolstering the protection of IT resources. On the contracting front, ...

Another federal agency has entered the arena for regulating e-commerce companies regarding the protection of consumer data. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has closed its first and so far only privacy case with a consent agreement between itself and an online payments processor. The...

The U.S. government is picking up the pace in its efforts to use open source software as much as possible. Federal CIO Tony Scott last month released details of a proposed policy designed to allow customized software created for one agency to be openly available to other agencies as well. Industry a...

Broadband Internet service providers are wary of a government plan to impose consumer privacy protection regulations on the sector. The Federal Communications Commission likely will issue the proposed regulations by Friday. It will accept public comment on the proposal before taking final action. Th...

The federal program for improving the operation of thousands of government data centers has entered a new phase that will impact significantly how electronic information is stored and managed. Proposed updates to data center operations will affect providers of data management products and could spur...

The Obama administration is seeking $3.1 billion for a fund to update federal IT resources that need to be replaced with more efficient systems. The fund would bolster the government's annual spending on IT, which is set for a modest increase to $89.8 billion in the administration's fiscal 2017 budg...

Vivek Kundra, the former federal CIO, envisioned that 25 percent of the funds the federal government spends each year on information technology could productively be deployed through cloud-based systems. Two recent reports on the status of federal cloud procurement show that for government IT manage...

U.S. government agencies have spent more on cloud configurations than official budgets have predicted -- and those agencies will pick up the pace of cloud spending over the next five years. Federal agencies will significantly boost spending on cloud deployments with various "as a service" configurat...

The U.S. government is under pressure to improve cybersecurity and is meeting that challenge with a commitment to substantially enhance spending for protecting IT systems. The Obama administration projected that the federal budget for cybersecurity spending in fiscal 2016 would be about $14 billion ...

The U.S. government was shaken last year when the Office of Personnel Management disclosed that employment records affecting 21.5 million people had been breached. The Obama administration initiated several comprehensive actions designed to shore up federal data protection -- including an immediate ...

The U.S. government has authorized an information technology contract with a potential value of $503 million that is designed to meet newly adopted goals for greatly improving IT acquisition. The General Services Administration, which issued the contract for software and cloud-related services, desc...

The Federal Trade Commission is extending its regulatory reach to the e-commerce impact of big data. For years, the FTC has asserted vigorously its authority to apply consumer protection laws to emerging developments in the IT realm. Now it is signaling that it will apply that same vigor to big data...

The U.S. Army may be in the walking phase of its plan to shift major portions of its information technology resources to the cloud, but a recent contracting initiative could move the service up to a jogging pace by the end of the year. The Army's progress in migrating much of its IT capabilities to ...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is engaged in an internal struggle over how it should assess the effect on consumers when businesses fail to provide proper e-commerce security. The outcome of the debate, which surfaced last month, will have a significant impact on the commission's ability to initi...

The Federal Trade Commission and Wyndham Worldwide this month reached a settlement over allegations the company violated federal law regarding the protection of customer records. The settlement could have a significant impact on e-commerce in that it ended a major legal challenge to the FTC's extens...

Federal information technology purchasing often involves large amounts of money based on the small print of acquisition requirements. Arcane procurement language seemingly can have a big impact on transactions. For IT vendors, provisions of recent legislation are prime examples of why it pays to scr...

The good news for federal information technology managers -- and the vendor community -- is that government IT budgets will remain stable for the next few years in terms of projected spending. An additional potential benefit is that a recent budget agreement will support agencies for two years, remo...

Just when the U.S. federal budget situation seemed about to settle down -- it didn't. With tens of billions of dollars at stake, federal acquisition managers and the IT vendors who support government agencies were breathing a sigh of relief when Congress and the White House agreed to a two-year gove...