FCW Insider: Aug. 24

Voice phishing attacks on the rise, CISA, FBI warn

An industry alert warns of an increasingly sophisticated social engineering campaign since July that is targeting VPNs and teleworkers.

GAO rejects bid by DHS to rescind opinion on illegal appointments

The Government Accountability Office is sticking to its guns on its legal opinion that states that top officials at the Department Homeland Security were elevated in violation of federal law.

STARS III deadline draws near

The STARS II small business contract proved so popular that its ceiling value has been extended several times, but the General Services Administration is ready for its successor.

Quick Hits

*** Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), who heads a border security subcommittee, are asking the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service to push back 13,000 employee furloughs that are scheduled to take effect Aug. 30. In an Aug. 21 letter the lawmakers noted that Congress and the agency had been working on a deal to secure funding to keep the agency at its current strength and cautioned that "to implement furloughs now could undermine ongoing efforts and cause severe, possibly irreparable, harm to USCIS."

*** The federal government is poised to move ahead with a change to the Federal Acquisition Regulation to apply a set of standard considerations to be taken into account when buying equipment to determine whether a purchase, long-term lease, short term rental or interagency swap is the most financially advantageous. The preliminary rule, proposed by the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration and NASA, includes a request for comments, which are due Oct. 23.