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DOJ Creates National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team; Lisa Monaco Quoted
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DOJ Creates National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team; Lisa Monaco Quoted

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has formed a new team to help conduct investigations and prosecute crimes associated with virtual currency exchanges, money laundering and other cryptocurrency cases.

“Today we are launching the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) to draw on the Department’s cyber and money laundering expertise to strengthen our capacity to dismantle the financial entities that enable criminal actors to flourish — and quite frankly to profit — from abusing cryptocurrency platforms” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement published Wednesday.

“As the technology advances, so too must the Department evolve with it so that we’re poised to root out abuse on these platforms and ensure user confidence in these systems,” Monaco added.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite will supervise NCET, which will include attorneys from DOJ criminal division’s money laundering and asset recovery section, computer crime and intellectual property section and assistant U.S. attorneys and will help trace and recover assets as a result of fraud, including payments to ransomware threat actors.

The NCET leader will be chosen based on experience in criminal investigations and cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies and will report to the assistant attorney general.

The newly established team will come up with strategic priorities for cryptocurrency-related investigations, build up and maintain relationships with federal, local, state and international law enforcement agencies, help coordinate information sharing and train federal prosecutors in developing prosecutorial and investigative strategies, among other functions.

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DARPA Seeks Quantum-Based Defense Optimization Problem Solving Tools
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DARPA Seeks Quantum-Based Defense Optimization Problem Solving Tools

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking proposals for a potential $58 million program aimed at developing hybrid systems for the Department of Defense to overcome optimization problems that could affect mission capabilities.

The Quantum-Inspired Classical Computing (QuICC) effort seeks to integrate analog hardware with digital logic processes to create QI solvers for dynamic system emulation, DARPA said Monday.

Participants in the QuICC program will aim to address technical obstacles, such as restricted inter-system connectivity and prohibitive digital resource growth, that prevent the expansion of existing quantum-inspired classical solvers from expanding covering large DOD-relevant cases.

“The goal is to enable a 500X performance improvement in the energy required to solve complex, DOD-relevant optimization problems,” said Bryan Jacobs, a program manager at DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office.

A broad agency announcement posted on SAM.gov stated that the agency expects to award $17 million for the first technical area of the project and $41 million for the second area. Proposals are due Dec. 8th.

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Octo Earns Silver Partnership With Cloud Native Computing Foundation
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Octo Earns Silver Partnership With Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Octo Consulting has become a Silver Partner of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which unites developers, end users and vendors in an ecosystem of open source projects to advance cloud-based innovations.

Mark Wells, vice president of Octo’s DevSecOps Center of Excellence, noted that the partnership is highly selective and that earning it positions Octo as a recognized leader in the modern software industry.

“Being a CNCF Silver Partner tells clients Octo is dedicated to the pursuit of building cloud native software solutions using the best technologies on the market,” Wells explained.

CNCF requires Silver Partners to have Kubernetes administration and development certifications, which Octo’s engineers worked to obtain in pursuit of the high-level partnership.

Wells added that Octo’s achievement of Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) credentials is an indication of the company’s in-depth experience in containerization, Kubernetes and service-based software architectures relevant in the evolving IT modernization landscape.

Additionally, Octo’s CTO, Sujey Edward said the CNCF partnership signifies Octo’s established capability in building “commercial grade solutions,” especially for the company’s federal government and Department of Defense customers.

The CNCF Silver Partnership is Octo’s latest achievement, in addition to the company’s previously earned Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Gold Partnership. The two partnerships recognize Octo as an advanced software company and further establish the company’s IT capabilities.

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AFRL Gathers Scientists to Discuss DSX Spacecraft Findings; William Robert Johnston Quoted
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AFRL Gathers Scientists to Discuss DSX Spacecraft Findings; William Robert Johnston Quoted

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) gathered scientists from government, industry and academia to discuss the initial results of a 23-month mission that conducted science experiments in Earth's radiation belts. 

AFRL said Tuesday it administered a virtual meeting where representatives from Leidos, NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other organizations to discuss findings of the Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) spacecraft, whose mission ended in May.

These discussions revolved around over 1,200 experiments executed with the DSX spacecraft, which was designed to study the radiation environment of medium Earth orbit.

“This meeting was in part, the AFRL science team's thought process to make sense of the hundreds of experiments – to build a comprehensive picture, to explain the unexpected and to move us further in applying our results to benefit DoD missions,” said William Robert Johnston, senior research physicist and principal investigator for DSX.

AFRL will continue to assess the results and publish related content in the next months.

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Francis Collins Ending Tenure as NIH Director
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Francis Collins Ending Tenure as NIH Director

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins will step down from his role by the end of year, concluding a 12-year tenure as the agency's leader.

He will continue to lead a laboratory at NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), which conducts biological studies on type 2 diabetes, the Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday.

Collins became NIH's director in 2009 under the Obama administration and continued to hold the role in the two succeeding administrations.

He joined the agency when he became the director of NHGRI, which he led from 1993 to 2008. His work at NIH includes leadership over the international Human Genome Project and contributions to research initiatives that tackled cancer, COVID-19 and other health issues.

As NIH director, Collins convinced Congress to boost NIH’s budget from $30 billion to $41.3 billion across his tenure.

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Northrop Grumman Awarded Air Force Contract for GHOST Sensor Development; Ben Davies Quoted
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Northrop Grumman Awarded Air Force Contract for GHOST Sensor Development; Ben Davies Quoted

Northrop Grumman Corporation has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Air Force to design a signals intelligence sensor for high-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms.

The company will employ its space awareness and global exploitation technology capabilities to deliver a prototype sensor with airborne and ground components for the Air Force’s Global High-altitude Open-system Sensor Technology (GHOST) program, Northrop Grumman said Tuesday.

Ben Davies, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and general manager of networked information solutions said, “leveraging our SAGE technology and 45 years of SIGINT mission expertise, our platform-agnostic GHOST sensor is a next-generation intelligence data collection and exploitation system.”

Northrop Grumman’s GHOST sensor prototype will feature an open standards-based hardware and software architecture that will be scalable and configurable for use on multiple types of manned and unmanned Air Force aircraft.

The GHOST sensor’s agile architecture will support ISR missions while enabling rapid system enhancement, testing and integration in anticipation of future advancements and battlespace changes.

This contract award continues the company’s contracted sensor work with the U.S. Air Force. Recently, Northrop Grumman served as the primary research team on a DARPA active electronically scanned array sensor system and facilitated the transition of the system to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) base in Dayton, Ohio.

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Stratasys’ New Data Security Offering Uses Red Hat Linux Platform; David Egts Quoted
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Stratasys’ New Data Security Offering Uses Red Hat Linux Platform; David Egts Quoted

Stratasys has unveiled a data security platform for additive manufacturing to help meet the cybersecurity requirements of U.S. government and defense agencies as they increase adoption of 3D printing.

The company said Thursday its ProtectAM offering uses the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform, which provides continuous data security in compliance with the requirements outlined in the Defense Information System Agency’s Security Technical Implementation Guide.

David Egts, chief technologist for North America public sector at Red Hat, said the company’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux helps users meet software security requirements for sensitive computing without compromising scalability, innovation and flexibility.

“We’re pleased to be able to provide this as a foundation for Stratasys as they work to innovate industrial 3D printing and additive manufacturing in the public sector,” Egts added.

Stratasys said its ProtectAM platform will be initially deployed on Stratasys FDM 3D printers, which government clients use to manufacture end-use parts and tools for ground maintenance, aviation and other applications.

The data security platform will also be available on Fortus 450mc and F900 3D printers before the end of 2021 and the company also expects ProtectAM to be fielded on Stratasys F370 and F770 printers by the first quarter of calendar year 2022.

Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations

ExecutiveBiz, sister site of GovConDaily and part of the Executive Mosaic digital media umbrella, will host a virtual event about securing the supply chain on Oct. 26. Visit ExecutiveBiz.com to sign up for the “Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations” event.

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Gen. Paul Nakasone: FireEye Helped Expose Foreign Adversary in SolarWinds Incident
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Gen. Paul Nakasone: FireEye Helped Expose Foreign Adversary in SolarWinds Incident

Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of U.S. Cyber Command and a five-time Wash100 Award recipient, said critical data provided by a threat intelligence firm enabled the Department of Defense to immediately act and block adversaries from compromising federal networks and exploiting targets in 2020, Defense News reported Tuesday.

Nakasone, who also serves as director of the National Security Agency, said a tip from FireEye helped expose adversaries linked to a Russian intelligence agency and their role in the SolarWinds incident.

“Partnerships across the U.S government and industry allowed us to uncover the scope and scale of a foreign intelligence operation that leveraged private infrastructure and caused immense private sector harm,” Nakasone said during his speech at a summit Tuesday.

“Instead of decades-long access to the U.S. government, the power of partnerships was able to expose our adversaries before they burrowed into our networks, our data, or our weapon systems,” he added.

Nakasone also discussed the threat posed by ransomware to critical infrastructure.

Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations

ExecutiveBiz, sister site of GovConDaily and part of the Executive Mosaic digital media umbrella, will host a virtual event about securing the supply chain on Oct. 26. Visit ExecutiveBiz.com to sign up for the “Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations” event.

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Pentagon to Fund 18 Hypersonics Research Projects; Gillian Bussey Quoted
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Pentagon to Fund 18 Hypersonics Research Projects; Gillian Bussey Quoted

Eighteen teams of universities, national laboratories and companies are set to receive $25.5 million in total grants from the Department of Defense (DOD) to conduct applied research on hypersonic systems.

DOD said Tuesday that it selected proposals from members of the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH) to receive the three-year funds in a push to build new vehicles and weapons that travel faster than the speed of sound.

Participants in the DOD-funded studies will come from 29 universities, three research centers within the Department of Energy laboratory network, 15 private organizations and four foreign academic institutions.

“Each project is led by a UCAH university partner, bringing together expertise from across the nation to tackle tough hypersonic problems," said Gillian Bussey, director of the Pentagon's Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO).

“These projects allow us to move our capabilities to the next rung up the ladder, and also provide a way to engage students in hypersonic research and connect with industry and the national labs, building the workforce we will need in the future.”

Texas A&M University’s Engineering Experiment Station manages the consortium under a potential five-year, $100 million contract awarded in 2020.

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Alka Patel Steps Down as DOD’s AI Ethics Policy Chief
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Alka Patel Steps Down as DOD’s AI Ethics Policy Chief

Alka Patel has departed her role as head of artificial intelligence ethics policy at the Department of Defense's Joint Artificial Intelliigence Center (JAIC) after 20 months in the job.

“My efforts focused across workforce, acquisition, policy, and international dialogues, having a chance to work with industry, partners and allies,” Patel wrote in a LinkedIn post.

DOD appointed her to the position in early 2020 to help the JAIC implement department-wide “Responsible AI” initiatives with the goal to ensure that the Pentagon's AI-based systems comply with ethical standards.

She previously worked as research intern at the Montreal AI Ethics Institute and executive director of the PwC-sponsored Risk and Regulatory Services Innovation Center at Carnegie Mellon University.

In her farewell message, Patel noted that she will move from Washington, D.C., to her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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