Dan Verton

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week offered the first public details of a proposed border-control system that will use biometric technology to authenticate the identities of visitors and immigrants entering the U.S.

In a series of speeches this week, two well-known political figures and a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency director warned of the dangers of inaction and lack of preparedness when it comes to cyberterrorism and homeland security.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Monday plans to begin a five-day exercise to test government and private-sector information-sharing in response to mock terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction.

The Pentagon Tuesday awarded Plano, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems Corp. a contract to develop and install a survivable IT and communications infrastructure capable of withstanding a future terrorist attack on a scale similar to or greater than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

As they struggle to survive an economic downturn that's being exacerbated by the war in Iraq, U.S. airlines are taking an increasingly demanding look at return on investment and "transformational" benefits before funding IT projects.

For the past 18 months, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been frantically trying to dig itself out of a knowledge management sinkhole created by years of mismanaged IT projects. And according to the bureau's former IT chief, progress to date has been astonishing.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a conglomeration of 177,000 employees from 22 federal agencies, this week began designing a new personnel system to replace dozens of disparate systems that now exist throughout the new agency.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to complete an initial inventory of its entire IT infrastructure by June -- a critical step toward the ultimate creation of a nationwide architecture for homeland security, said Steve Cooper, the department's chief information officer.