The U.S. Chamber of Commerce asks Congress and the Biden administration to implement specific measures that internationally address cyber threats targeting businesses.

These measures include the disruption of international ransomware systems, the creation of an international coalition against ransomware and the enhancement of international law enforcement assets, the Chamber of Commerce said Friday.

Christopher Roberti, senior vice president for cyber, intelligence and supply chain security policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the government must now respond against cybercriminals that threaten businesses.

“The U.S. and allied governments must work together with the private sector to confront these challenges head-on,” he said.

Josh Corman, senior adviser for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said at the recent RSA conference that organizations must consider appointing an executive who would oversee the security of software products. 

Corman said the need for a chief product security officer (CPSO) arises amid the software-centric nature of recent attacks, Nextgov reported Friday. Corman and Chris Wysopal, founder of Veracode, spoke at the conference about the growing need for CPSOs in organizations.

“The idea is we need this new individual, to do something that, you know, spans many different departments now,” Wysopal said.

Corman noted that a good CSPO would be someone who is bimodal and willing to work with executive stakeholders to develop standards for risk-based hiring.

The Department of the Air Force is transitioning the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) into a new operational phase after meeting key standards in the past 18 months, the Air Force reported Friday.

ABMS seeks to help commanders and soldiers expedite sharing of information to achieve decision superiority and serves as the department’s contribution to the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All Domain and Control effort.

“We’ve demonstrated that our ABMS efforts can collect vast amounts of data from air, land, sea, space and cyber domains, process that information and share it in a way that allows for faster and better decisions,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown.

Under the new phase, the department’s Rapid Capabilities Office will acquire new software and equipment and install them on aircraft and other hardware and perform more testing activities. The new phase also provides Air Force and Space Force officials an opportunity to test ABMS’ ability to move data to a diverse joint force from a central source.

Capability Release No. 1 marks the initial step under the new phase of the ABMS program. Under this concept, a communications pod aboard a KC-46 Pegasus aircraft will enable the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II fighter jets to get and transmit the latest data needed to deliver decision superiority to the joint force.

President Biden has signed an executive order to direct the director of the National Economic Council and the national climate adviser to create within 120 days a government-wide strategy to identify climate-related financial risk to government assets, programs and liabilities.

The EO calls for the secretary of the Department of the Treasury to work with members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council to evaluate the climate-related financial risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and federal government and come up with a report within 180 days on recommended measures to help address risks to financial stability, the White House said Thursday.

Under the new policy, the secretary of the Department of Labor should consider rescinding or suspending any rules from the previous administration that would have prevented investment companies from taking a look at climate-related risks and other environmental and social factors in their investment decisions with regard to workers’ pensions.

The new administration will also require federal suppliers to divulge climate-linked financial risks and greenhouse gas emissions and ensure that major agency procurements reduce the risk of climate change.

The federal government should publish an annual assessment of its climate-associated fiscal risk exposure, while the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should help the federal government minimize that exposure to such financial risk “through the formulation of the President’s Budget and oversight of budget execution.”

In early May, the president also issued an executive order that calls for the creation of the climate change support office within the State Department.

A nonprofit oceanographic research center in Moss Landing, California, secured rights to use technology designed by Northrop Grumman to facilitate underwater electrical connections as part of a non-exclusive licensing deal.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute plans to further develop and apply the NiobiCon technology to power autonomous underwater vehicles intended for deep-ocean studies, Northrop said Friday.

"NiobiCon connector technology has the potential to dramatically reduce the frequency at which our underwater vehicles need to return to shore, enabling us to achieve a persistent presence at sea," said Andrew Hamilton, chair of MBARI's engineering division.

Northrop said its power connection system uses niobium to create a molecule-sized insulating layer and protect connectors from being exposed to water before they link with one another.

The company signed its first non-exclusive NiobiCon licensing agreement with interconnecting technology manufacturing company iCONN Systems last year.

Army Futures Command (AFC) is considering how to evolve collaboration tools and processes and other technologies as it prepares to support the hybrid workforce, Federal News Network reported Friday.

Kate Kelley, chief human capital officer of AFC, highlighted during a Thursday webinar the importance of striking the right balance of productivity, work location and positive lessons learned and the need to empower commanders to establish structures for their workforce by allowing them to take a “tailored approach.”

“And so I think what you’ll start to see from the Army perspective is flexibility to then employ more aggressive telework strategies than we’ve ever seen before. And then to tailor them to the unique needs of the organization,” Kelley said.

Col. Dave Lamy, the command’s chief information officer, said the service should modernize amid evolving work environments and provide the capability to support the commands. 

“One of the best ways to do that, in my mind, would be a Bring Your Own Device-like capability, where the Army does not need to continue to provide what we call GFE: government-furnished equipment,” Lamy said.

“The technology is out there; we just have to catch up with a policy to ensure that you can have that on a personally owned phone, as opposed to the government-issued phone which would, in the long run, save the government a small amount of money while maintaining the level of security that DoD requires,” he added.

An office within the Air Force Civil Engineer Center’s planning and integration directorate has completed an initial training class for operators and instructors of small unmanned aircraft systems as the military service prepares to incorporate drones into mission essential tasks.

The sUAS office for the AF Geobase Program trained geospatial integration personnel through classroom and hands-on activities meant to help them learn how to operate Group 1 sUAS platforms that weigh less than 20 pounds and to collect data using the systems, the U.S. Air Force said Sunday.

Julio Toala, GeoBase operations manager and sUAS program manager at the Air Force, estimates that the branch's data gathering, image processing and light detection and ranging system capabilities would increase 10-fold with the use of drones.

He expects the team to reach another program milestone in the fall.

Jose Alfonsin, a Woolpert sUAS developer who supports the GeoBase mission, said an sUAS has the potential to help military construction project managers monitor progress without them going to the site and assist civil engineers when they need to inspect building areas such as a rooftop.

The AF GeoBase team is planning to forward policies and strategies for the full execution of sUAS systems that will aid the operations of AFCEC directorates, including the development of a playbook that will be used for training.

With the rising cyber threats to both the public and private sectors, five industry associations are pushing the House and Senate Appropriations committees to authorize a $705 million increase in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency budget for fiscal year 2022.

The Alliance for Digital Innovation, Computing Technology Industry Association, Cybersecurity Coalition, Information Technology Industry Council and the Internet Association told lawmakers in a joint letter Tuesday the funding boost would help CISA meet cybersecurity goals in the long term.

Citing the recent attacks on SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline and Pulse Connect Secure, the associations said the additional budget is necessary to protect the country’s information technology assets from a large-scale breach.

The groups wrote that the shift to cloud-based and virtual environments of the workforce due to the COVID-19 pandemic made the service systems more vulnerable to attackers.

“Given this combination of larger attack surfaces and increased use of sophisticated cyberattacks by our adversaries, we must act quickly to strengthen our nation’s security posture,” according to the letter obtained by Federal News Network.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act approved by Congress in March includes $650 million for cyber risk mitigation initiatives at CISA.

While the funding allocation is a one-time capital to address urgent cybersecurity matters, the associations said it only amounts to “a tiny fraction of the long-term investment needed to build and empower CISA.”