Government

The American Technology Council, which President Donald Trump established this spring by executive order, has four years to rebuild the federal government's information technology structure. A massive reboot of both hardware and software will be necessary to bring government computers up to modern s...

The Internet Association, which represents 40 of the United States' leading technology companies -- including Facebook, Google, Amazon and others -- on Monday filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission, urging it to maintain Net neutrality regulations enacted during the Obama administ...

Recent ransomware threats have escalated into a global crisis, and cybersecurity experts and government authorities have redoubled their investigative efforts. Of grave concern is the possibility that the recent Petya attack had more sinister motives than typical ransomware operations, and that stat...

GOVERNMENT IT REPORT

VA Gives Thumbs Up to Commercial IT Software

A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs decision to pursue a new direction in processing health records has created a highly visible endorsement of the use of commercial off-the-shelf information technology by federal agencies. President Trump cited the VA's action as an example of the administration...

The European Commission has walloped Google unit with a record $2.7 billion for giving its own shopping comparison site preference above smaller competitors, and thus abusing its dominant position as a search engine. Google must end the conduct within 90 days or face penalties of 5 percent of its av...

A new ransomware exploit dubbed "Petya" struck major companies and infrastructure sites this week, following last month's WannaCry ransomware attack, which wreaked havoc on more than 300,000 computers across the globe. Petya is believed to be linked to the same set of hacking tools as WannaCry. Pety...

A data contractor working on behalf of the Republican National Committee earlier this month allowed the personal data of 198 million voters to be exposed online, marking the largest ever leak of voter data in history, according to the cybersecurity firm that discovered the incident. Deep Root Anal...

Federal and state officials have confirmed that cyberattacks against state voting systems during the 2016 election were more widespread than previously disclosed to the public, but they said the heightened activity did not impact final vote tallies. The confirmations follow Tuesday's Bloomberg repor...

Amazon has introduced a Prime membership priced at $5.99 monthly for people on government assistance who have a valid EBT card. A Prime membership ordinarily costs $10.99 per month, or $99 per year. The EBT card is used to disburse funds for a variety of government assistance programs, including TAN...

The WannaCry ransom attack that quickly circled the globe last week is not yet fully contained. So far, it has impacted more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries. However, one of the remarkable things about it is that only a trifling $100,000 in ransom, give or take, apparently has been paid. Hac...

Competition in telecom price and service packages has been getting a lot of attention lately. However, network providers also have been pursuing other opportunities that consumers might miss if they're exposed only to traditional advertising. AT&T's cooperation with the U.S. government in develo...

Microsoft this weekend unleashed its wrath on the National Security Agency, alleging it was responsible for the ransomware attack that began last week and has spread to thousands of corporate, government and individual computer systems around the world. Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith launc...

Comedian John Oliver, incensed over proposed changes to unravel Net neutrality protections for consumers, unleashed a torrent of criticism against the Federal Communications Commission and urged viewers to register their protest online. The response led to a digital meltdown on the agency's site Sun...

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a long-anticipated executive order that addresses a campaign promise to begin shifting the country toward the "Buy American, Hire American" strategy that appealed to much of the industrial working class population in the Rust Belt states. The order calls on t...

E-Commerce Times Channels