While pursuing a Master’s degree at American University, Andrew Hallman took a class taught by a professor on sabbatical from the CIA. As he learned of the pivotal role intelligence plays in policy and security, Hallman wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to know more. Three years after earning his degree and many background checks later, he followed that desire into a job at the CIA.

After a closed-door hearing on Jan. 22, the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence praised efforts by government to get its backlog of active security clearance adjudications under control, but want to see the system support more diversity among intelligence community recruits.

Agencies in the Intelligence community are scoring high on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. One of the top ranked agencies this year was the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The ODNI workers reported good feedback on mission and enjoy their positions much more than years prior. Sherry Van Sloun, Assistant Director of National Intelligence for Human Capital, says that there are a few key factors that determined their placement in the rankings.

A top U.S. election security official warned on Tuesday that the country faces threats from adversaries beyond Russia, and can count on "more sophisticated" attacks from other state and non-state actors ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

"This is not a Russia-only problem," said Shelby Pierson, who serves as the intelligence community's election threats executive within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, [and] non-state hacktivists all have opportunity, means, and potentially motive to come after the United States in the 2020 election to accomplish their goals."

Intelligence community CIO John Sherman views his partnerships with both internal and external stakeholders as key to IT modernization success.

Congress, America’s international allies, other federal agencies like the Department of Defense and intelligence community staff all count among these important stakeholders, he said Tuesday at the Cloudera Data Cloud Summit.