FCW Insider: April 29
Top stories, quick hits and other updates from FCW's reporters and editors.
The Trump administration rolled out a new shared services plan and named four agencies to leadership roles in a bid to reduce more than $25 billion in annual spending on duplicative back-office functions. Chase Gunter reports on what's new in shared services.
Department of Veterans Affairs employees are taking it upon themselves to develop tech tools to improve their centers' business and operations by making use of a homegrown open source web app. Chase looks at employee solutions to pressing workflow problems.
The research arm of the Department of Homeland Security is looking to develop cybersecurity tools for of existing and emerging wireless protocols to its arsenal of network protection capabilities for federal agencies. As Mark Rockwell explains, the agency is reaching back to remedy long-standing SS7 vulnerabilities and looking ahead to emerging 5G architecture.
Caroline Bean, deputy program manager and lead engineer of the Defense Information System's Agency's MilCloud 2.0, talks about what's next for the massive cloud migration. Lauren C. Williams has the story.
The Government Accountability Office is pushing the Department of Homeland Security on tardy cybersecurity reforms. Mark has more.
Quick Hits
*** FBI Director Christopher Wray said companies should focus on their own insider threats rather than look to pursue suspected hackers outside their own networks.
At an April 26 event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, Wray said the practice of "hacking back…creates all kinds of potentially unintended consequences, and so not something we would recommend, any more than we would recommend people taking justice into their own hands privately in another arena." He added that "even among sophisticated audiences... people tend to think of cybersecurity as their perimeter, whereas in fact in many ways the most important part of cyber security in today's world is inside. It's your own insiders."