. She has covered technology for nine years at such publications as
. Before joining
, she covered agriculture and derivatives trading for Congressional Quarterly. She has been a guest commentator on C-SPAN, WTOP and Federal News Radio. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
August 27, 2014 Federal agencies should repurpose the certification route for vetting commercial cloud computing services to also screen popular mobile apps before employees download them, a top Department of Homeland Security official says. Nearly every day, white hat hackers discover bugs in app code that bad actors can take advantage of to ...
August 26, 2014 The Commerce Department inspector general is blasting a federal climate-satellite program and its supporting contractor, Raytheon, for ignoring tens of thousands of major cyber vulnerabilities. The weaknesses identified in a new IG memo could impair machines controlling the Joint Polar Satellite System, the nation's next-generation fleet of polar orbiting environmental ...
August 26, 2014 Local cops in California are accused of using work time and office equipment to search for women on Internet dating sites – with back-up from a government intelligence system, a CBS affiliate in Sacramento reports. Officers Stephen Ruiz and Jacob Glashoff pinged the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System – a ...
August 26, 2014 The Commerce Department inspector general is blasting a federal climate-satellite program and its supporting contractor, Raytheon, for ignoring tens of thousands of major cyber vulnerabilities. The weaknesses identified in a new IG memo could impair machines controlling the Joint Polar Satellite System, the nation's next-generation fleet of polar orbiting environmental ...
August 25, 2014 It remains to be seen whether data security experts will be assigned to a White House tech squad recently forged to ensure government websites work better than the initial, botched HealthCare.gov, Obama administration officials said Monday. Privacy advocates, and even Google, are calling on websites worldwide to offer stronger safeguards, ...
August 22, 2014 In case you missed our coverage this week in ThreatWatch, Nextgov’s regularly updated index of cyber breaches: Community Health Systems breach affects 4.5 million patients The U.S. hospital operator said personal data, including names and addresses, of about 4.5 million people was stolen from its computer network. Foreign dot-gov sites ...
August 22, 2014 U.S. courts are moving forward with a plan federal agencies say is needed to track down potential terrorists hiding out on the Internet but privacy advocates say would give the FBI wide latitude to hack into people's computers. The U.S. Courts Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure has published ...
August 21, 2014 The National Institute of Standards and Technology has prepared new agency guidelines for screening commercial apps before federal employees download them. Third-party Android and iPhone apps have been known to harbor vulnerabilities -- either intentionally or inadvertently -- that could expose government data to outsiders. At the same time, agencies ...
August 20, 2014 Medical staff treating patients with Ebola and other communicable diseases in Africa face a novel kind of smartphone security problem. When aiding Ebola patients, "What about the mobile device that you hand off to the next medical person?" said Rocky Young, a practicing physician assistant and director of cybersecurity, information ...
August 19, 2014 Nuclear Regulatory Commission computers within the past three years were successfully hacked by foreigners twice and also by an unidentifiable individual, according to an internal investigation. One incident involved emails sent to about 215 NRC employees in "a logon-credential harvesting attempt," according to an inspector general reportNextgov obtained through an ...