FCW Insider: October 5, 2021

Peraton wins $2.7B DHS cloud and data center award

After a few speed bumps and a bridge contract, the Department of Homeland Security awarded its Data Center and Cloud Optimization contract.

OPM director talks federal recruitment with students

Kiran Ahuja talked about streamlining hiring, implementing President Biden's executive order on diversity and more at a George Mason University event

Bipartisan FISMA update drops

Leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee introduced legislation on Monday to update the Federal Information Security Modernization Act to clarify the role of CISA in defending federal networks.

Tough conversations on ransomware ahead

The U.S. government, will have to start regularly having hard conversations "country to country" on state-sponsored cyberattacks, according to a top Defense Department official.

Quick Hits

*** Civilian employees at the Department of Defense have until Nov. 22 to get fully vaccinated, per an Oct. 1 memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. DOD already mandated vaccination for U.S. military service members in August. Since then, the Biden administration has mandated vaccinations for executive branch feds, who are also under that Nov. 22 deadline, as well as contractors. New civilian employees have to be vaccinated either by their start date or Nov. 22, whichever is later. Employees should be ready to provide a copy of their vaccination record to the agency.

*** The Naval Postgraduate School and AT&T will develop and test 5G and edge computing-based maritime solutions for potential use in national defense and homeland security. Read more on this story in GCN.

*** The Information Technology Industry Council expanded its comments on the federal government's proposed zero trust strategy to suggest that policymakers take employee-owned devices used under bring-your-own-device policies into account. According to the trade group, federal employees who use their own devices on agency networks "may be required to consent to giving up some of the control over their personal device in exchange for working from a personal device."