FCW Insider: June 7, 2021
The latest news and analysis from FCW's reporters and editors.
The small federal office at the heart of Biden's equity agenda
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs at the Department of Labor may not be a household name but it plays an outside part in conducting oversight of pay and hiring discrimination.
DHS faces setbacks implementing CDM, watchdog says
The Department of Homeland Security has failed to address critical vulnerabilities across information technology assets due to significant delays in the department's rollout of a federal Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program.
Many federal websites don't meet accessibility requirements, study finds
Out of 72 government websites studied, 30% didn't meet accessibility standards, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
ICYMI: Army rolls back short-lived IoT telework policy
The Army is "restaffing" the policy, which would have required teleworkers to turn off or remove smart devices, such as Amazon Echo speakers, from their remote workspaces.
Quick Hits
*** Oracle and one its top resellers find themselves in familiar territory with a solicitation for cloud computing services that effectively excludes them from bidding. Washington Technology reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released a solicitation for a blanket purchase agreement requiring vendors to offer Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud in order to bid.
*** Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on Meet the Press on June 6 that in addition to favoring mandatory reporting requirements for cyberattack victims and advocating for international norms so that states don't shield cyber threat actors, he would like to see legislation making it mandatory for companies to report ransom payments made to free systems from ransomware.
"We need more transparency. Because right now what's happening around ransomware, not only are the companies often not reporting that they are attacked, but they're not reporting the ransomware payments," Warner said.