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At the end of a get out the vote campaign event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton was asked about her plans for protecting cyber security. "It is one of the most important challenges the next president is going to face," Clinton said. [Snip] The AP reported that during Clinton's time at the State Department that it was one of the worst agencies in the federal government at protecting its computer networks. The deteriorating situation continued well into when John Kerry took over.

Talk about a bad week. Poll numbers tanking, polling shows millennial ladies prefer Bernie, her attempts to connect with minority demographics flopping hard, 13 Hours hits theaters, resurrecting the Benghazi story, and now a second Congressional investigation. This latest investigation centers around the security of Hillary's home-brewed email server used during her tenure as Secretary of State. According to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman: Understanding these companies' roles in providing software and services to maintain former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server is critical to improving government cybersecurity standards. A high profile...

Iranian hackers infiltrated the control system of a small dam less than 20 miles from New York City two years ago, sparking concerns that reached to the White House, according to former and current U.S. officials and experts familiar with the previously undisclosed incident. The breach came amid attacks by hackers linked to Iran's government against the websites of U.S. banks, and just a few years after American spies had damaged an Iranian nuclear facility with a sophisticated computer worm called Stuxnet. In October 2012, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called out Iran's hacking, prompting fears of cyberwar. The still-classified dam...

Never mind the secret and mysterious government watchlists: The government could and should be sending its list of people who overstay their visas to federally licensed firearms dealers, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told two Obama administration officials on Thursday. Speaking at a hearing on foreign travelers and national security, Gowdy said three groups of people currently are barred by law from purchasing or possessing a firearms, including people in the country without permission; people who overstay their visas; and even, in most cases, people who are here on a valid visa. "Are those lists made available to federally licensed firearms...

The Senate is on the cusp of passing its biggest cybersecurity bill to date, following years of debate and countless revisions to the contentious legislation. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) would encourage companies to share their data on hackers with the government. With the House having already approved its companion legislation and the White House on board, the Senate’s is the final OK needed for Congress to enact its first major cybersecurity bill in years. “We have been at this for six years,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a CISA co-sponsor, on the floor last week. “This is the...

The U.S. Senate is expected to begin considering as soon as Tuesday a long-delayed bill that would make it easier for corporations to share information about cyber attacks with each other or the government without concern about lawsuits. The House of Representatives passed its version of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) in April. A few lawmakers and several big tech companies, however, have come out against the measure, arguing that it fails to protect users' privacy and does too little to prevent cyber attacks. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group representing Facebook, Google and other major...

Under continued fire for her use of a private, unsecured email account to conduct official State Department business, Hillary Clinton now faces charges that cybersecurity suffered at the State Department during her time as secretary.

WASHINGTON – The State Department was among the worst agencies in the federal government at protecting its computer networks while Hillary Clinton was secretary from 2009 to 2013, a situation that continued to deteriorate as John Kerry took office and Russian hackers breached the department's email system, according to independent audits and interviews...

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email scandal didn’t stop the head of the CIA from using his own personal AOL account to stash work-related documents, according to a stoner high school student who claims to have hacked into them. CIA Director John Brennan’s private account held sensitive files — including his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance — until he recently learned that it had been infiltrated, the hacker told The Post. Other emails stored in Brennan’s non-government account contained the Social Security numbers and personal information of more than a dozen top American intelligence officials, as well as a government letter...

Smart power. So much smart power. I don't know if anyone has ever tapped into this much smart power before. Picture a nerd screeching about "smart power" while the school bullies beat him up and you've got a picture of Obama's awesome smart power foreign policy. America's enemies now make a special point of humiliating him after each fake agreement and deal. Iran tests ballistic missiles and convicts a US reporter right after ratifying the nuke deal. And China makes a point of slapping Obama around right after his latest fake agreement with China. It was heralded as the first...

Police in Delaware are slowly piecing together the details surrounding the death of former presidential advisor John P. "Jack" Wheeler III. It now seems Wheeler spent at least two days wandering the streets of Wilmington disoriented. Police say Wheeler traveled from Washington, D.C., where he worked, to Wilmington Tuesday on an AMTRAK train. He was last seen alive at 3:30 p.m. Thursday near the Hotel duPont parking garage at 10th and Orange streets. Iman Goldsborough, the parking lot attendant, encountered a man she believes was Wheeler on Wednesday night near the intersection where he was last officially seen Thursday. Goldsborough...

Chinese officials have summoned top American tech executives to Seattle for a forum on Wednesday in a show of force that could make the Obama administration’s standing in Silicon Valley appear weak by comparison. Beijing moved up the date of the annual event to coincide with President Xi Jinping’s U.S. visit and reportedly pressured major Silicon Valley players to send their chief executives to what is normally an annual summit for midlevel management, threatening regulatory scrutiny if they didn’t comply. “It’s not really voluntary,” said Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Jason Healey, a former director of cyber infrastructure protection at the...

Two reports on Thursday should send alarm bells clanging to beef up the government's cybersecurity. Whether anyone in the Obama administration will hear them is another question.

Congress returns this week with cybersecurity as one item on a long list of priorities that may or may not be addressed in the final months of the year. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act has been teed up for Senate action this fall, amid strong support from the business community. But there is still no definitive date for floor consideration, and online privacy groups are mounting their own campaign to sink the measure. Other cyber issues — such as better securing the government's own networks, updating criminal law to address cyber challenges, Electronic Communications Privacy Act reform, consumer data-breach notification,...

The overwhelming majority of California's state agencies are ill-prepared to defend against cyberattacks, according to the state auditor, putting Social Security numbers, health records, and income tax information at risk for millions of Californians.

A breach of taxpayers' information at the Internal Revenue Service was bigger than initially disclosed, the agency said Monday. Hackers gained access to the information of as many as 220,000 more people than the 104,000 accounts that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in June may have been compromised. The IRS said it is mailing 220,000 letters notifying people that their information may be compromised. It said that it would also offer free credit protection and Identity Protection PINs to the victims. The revelation Monday is the result of an IRS review of an earlier incident in the spring, when hackers...

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s mysterious email server has been in a private data center in New Jersey since 2013, that is, until the IT company the former secretary of state hired to maintain the hardware handed the “blank” device over to the FBI Wednesday. Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, informed the Department of State in a letter Wednesday that the company hired to manage and maintain the server, Denver-based Platte River Networks, was turning it over to the Department of Justice. Kendall also told State he handed over three thumb drives that contained Clinton’s emails. The Washington Post reported the...

What is Will Hurd, Republican Congressman from Texas, doing here? “The best way to defend digital networks is to have an attacker’s mentality,” Hurd told Defense One. Hurd, who spent nearly a decade as an undercover CIA operative in places like Afghanistan, doesn’t freak out easily. ... For one thing, he ran a cybersecurity firm for four years. Naturally, he’s made cybersecurity a cornerstone of his legislative efforts.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19, 2010 – New guidelines from U.S. Strategic Command officials allow servicemembers to use “thumb drives” and other flash media to store computer data under specific circumstances. Strategic Command officials banned use of thumb drives and flash media in November 2008, after the use of the media infected a number of Defense Department computer systems. Computers users had to turn to alternative means to transfer data from one machine to another. Now, the command has lifted the ban on the devices under carefully controlled circumstances, said Navy Vice Adm. Carl V. Mauney, Stratcom’s deputy commander. The command issued...

Year after year the American people have been constantly warned of the impending doom that are their Social Security benefits due to fact that there are now more people collecting Social Security than paying into it. While the controversy over the future of Social Security is well known, what has not received much attention is that right now Americans are in danger of having their benefits delayed, and not just their Social Security checks. Veterans who fought for this country, and who are dependent on financial support from the Veterans Administration (VA) to purchase medicine or treatment could also see...