In 2024, the Legislature passed SHB 1947, which eliminated the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and incorporated all duties and responsibilities to Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech), as well as renamed the agency from Consolidated Technology Services (CTS) to WaTech. Previous references to the OCIO or CTS should be understood to refer to WaTech.
The U.S Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) today released a ransomware guide developed in coordination with the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC). The guide is now available on CISA's website: https://www.cisa.gov/publication/ransomware-guide
The resource was developed for state, local, tribal and territorial governments (SLTT) and…
One of the most important things you can do to protect your computer is to regularly update the operating system. But that won't be an option for many Windows 7 users starting early next year.
Microsoft plans to end support for the Windows 7 operating system on January 14, 2020, except for organizations who purchase extended support through January 2023.
For organizations…
Every year Washington state agencies publish a bunch of reports analyzing what's going on in the state. In 2014 there were at least 140 of them contributed to the State Library's very under-appreciated Depository program. Most of these are on topics requested by the legislature - policy questions that aren't quite ripe for decision yet, or accountability for key programs. Often they help…
Over the past two months we've interviewed 109 business owners and prospective business owners from across the state, ranging from sole proprietors to newly-formed LLCs to mid-size companies in heavily regulated industries to businesses just hiring their first employee to business owners that didn't know they had to register at all. From minority and women
Each interview we do is…
