Government

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into a hack of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that led to personal data being stolen from at least 100,000 taxpayers' accounts of the 200,000 that were hit. The hackers got the data by accessing the Get Transcript application, which let...

A substantial number of Europeans shop online, but few make purchases outside their own country. The European Commission aims to change that through a broad initiative to create a Digital Single Market, announced earlier this month. One of the 16 steps the EC has taken toward achieving that goal is ...

U.S. government agencies have invested time, effort and significant funding in the last several years to meet the challenges of cybersecurity threats. Unfortunately, the payoff has been disappointing, according to a report from the ISC2 Foundation, an affiliate of the International Information Syste...

Charter Communications on Tuesday announced a deal to acquire and merge with Time Warner Cable, and also reaffirmed its commitment to buy Bright House Networks. The $56 billion cash-and-stock acquisition, if regulators give it a nod, will result in a merger of Charter Communications and TWC under a ...

Americans are deeply troubled by surveillance, data collection and the security of their data that's held by government agencies and private companies, Pew Research has found. The combined results of two surveys -- one of 500 adults between August and September last year and one of 460 adults betw...

The Justice Department is stepping up its program to engage more actively with the private sector on dealing with cybercrime and cybersecurity breaches. "We in government know that we cannot go it alone in fighting cybercrime. We need a strong partnership with you in the private sector," Assistant A...

U.S. government agencies can significantly improve their ability to deal with cybersecurity problems by utilizing big data analytics. However, agencies are finding it difficult to fully benefit from these advanced analytical tools for a variety of reasons -- including dealing with the sheer volume o...

"The chief business of the American people is business," President Calvin Coolidge said. Although that has become the country's rubric, lawmakers in the United States aren't inclined to give business free rein. The Department of Justice last month trumpeted its first online marketing prosecution: th...

The United States Federal Aviation Administration last week came under fire once again for problems with the implementation of its troubled Next Generation Air Transportation System. The NextGen program to overhaul the U.S. national air traffic control system, estimated to cost $29 billion between 2...

A U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled, in essence, that the NSA's collection of metadata concerning Americans' communications is illegal. The court vacated U.S. District Judge William Pauley's December 2013 ruling in ACLU v. Clapper, and remanded the case to the lower court. Pauley had granted the gover...

The U.S. Supreme Court last month granted a request from Spokeo, a data aggregator, to consider whether the legal basis litigants must meet to file a claim in federal court should be broadly or narrowly defined. In the case, Spokeo, Inc. v. Thomas Robins, Thomas Robins is a resident of Virginia acti...

Federal agencies need to change course in handling IT spending quickly, particularly in reversing the inertia behind longstanding conflicts between CIOs and CFOs over the procurement of IT resources, according to IDC Government Insights Research Director Shawn McCarthy. Government IT managers need t...

Two cybersecurity bills approved this week by the U.S. House of Representatives pose a threat to citizens' privacy, according to opponents of the measures. Both bills, H.R. 1560 and H.R. 1731, aim to improve sharing of cybersecurity information between businesses and government agencies. "'Informati...

Comcast has decided to abandon its plan to merge with Time Warner Cable, according to multiple press reports. The company is expected to make a formal announcement on Friday. About a week after reports emerged indicating the U.S. Department of Justice was leaning against Comcast's $45.2 billion doll...

The dynamic world of information technology calls for a future-oriented approach to IT management. However, government agencies too often may be looking backward rather than forward with respect to how they operate IT systems, especially when it comes to investing huge sums of taxpayer money into th...