Bob Kolasky, assistant director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) National Risk Management Center (NRMC), said his team has studied the software risks associated with last year's SolarWinds hack, Fedscoop reported Wednesday.

SolarWinds was a Russian malware attack that affected Orion software in multiple federal agencies. Kolasky said NRMC assessed SolarWinds-related software risks over a span of four months.

Attacks like SolarWinds, according to Kolasky, should be addressed by bolstered supply chain security. He said users must gain a better understanding of their critical information technology processes, as well as the software and hardware involved.

“That actually means differentiating between the hardware and software you rely upon to do critical processes and doing your own survey of what your critical processes are,” he stated.

NRMC serves as a collaborative medium where parties from different sectors may jointly study and manage infrastructure risks.

QTS Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: QTS), a leading provider of software-defined and mega scale data center solutions, announced today that its Board of Directors has authorized quarterly cash dividends for common and preferred stock for the second quarter of 2021.

Common Stock
QTS' Board of Directors has authorized a cash dividend of $0.50 per share on its common stock for the second quarter of 2021. The $0.50 per share dividend is payable on July 7, 2021 to common stockholders of record at the close of business on June 18, 2021.

Series A Preferred Stock
QTS' Board of Directors has authorized a cash dividend of $0.4453125 per share on its 7.125% Series A Cumulative Redeemable Perpetual Preferred Stock (the "Series A Preferred Stock") for the period from and including April 15, 2021 and ending on July 14, 2021. The $0.4453125 per share dividend is payable on July 15, 2021 to holders of Series A Preferred Stock of record at the close of business on June 30, 2021, which is equivalent to $1.78125 per annum per share.

Four Senate lawmakers asked President Biden to direct the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to come up with a finalized plan for the construction of a consolidated FBI headquarters building.

The FBI’s existing offices at the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington, D.C., have deteriorated in the past four decades, raising security concerns and impeding the bureau’s ability to meet its national security and law enforcement missions, the senators said in an April 30 letter to the president.

In January 2016, GSA asked shortlisted contractors to submit proposals for the second phase of the FBI Headquarters Consolidation Project. At the time of the release of the request for proposals, GSA identified two potential sites in Maryland and one in Virginia for the new FBI building. However, the previous administration decided to drop the project in 2017.

“Despite the political obstacles of recent years, we hope you will consider our request and provide the direction needed for this crucial project to move forward expeditiously,” the senators wrote in the letter to the president.

The letter was signed by Sens. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md.; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Mark Warner, D-Va., and Tim Kaine, D-Va.

The Federal Aviation Administration has added areas of space launch activity to the agency's pilot navigation charts as commercial space operations continue to increase. FAA said Wednesday that it expects the number of authorized launch and reentry missions to increase from 41 last year to 50 or above during 2021.

The agency uses a rocket symbol to mark launch sites on the navigational resource for aircraft pilots who use the virtual approach. Twelve spaceports located in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia hold an FAA license.

A new agency rule that went into effect on March 21 provides the commercial space transportation industry a set of licensing and safety guidelines meant to simplify the regulatory process. 

Lisa Sanders, director of Science and Technology for special operations forces, acquisition, technology and logistics at U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), said contested environments where data and computing power are unavailable are pushing the military to reinvent artificial intelligence and come up with new insights into how people use AI, Defense One reported Wednesday.

SOCOM is determining ways how to shrink AI and identifying areas to focus on where AI could support missions of warfighters operating in environments where connectivity is lacking.

“What are use cases where I can create some things that AI at the edge can process? Things like being able to tell a direction, a distance,” Sanders said.

SOCOM is working to develop new software tools that could help address the challenge posed by translation to soldiers.

“We’re doing a six-month effort where we are doing a representative language (not a high-density language)… to figure out how big that thesaurus needs to be. How much flexibility does it need to have to be operationally relevant? That’s an example where processing at the edge is going to limit us. Those analytics need the power to run,” Sanders told the publication.

The command is also working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on programs that could help develop AI applications for warfighters operating in contested environments.

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The Congressional Research Service has released a report outlining some of the national security implications of 5G-enabled mobile technologies. CRS said in the April 23rd report that Congress may consider policies for national security, spectrum management, and military operations as 5G platforms are developed and fielded. 

According to the document, large portions of the usable electromagnetic spectrum are held by the Department of Defense (DOD), which also uses sub-6 frequencies. The Defense Innovation Board (DIB) recommended that DOD help facilitate the development of 5G networks by considering sharing the sub-6 spectrum. 

The report also discusses the national security risks posed by China’s telecommunications equipment and 5G infrastructure and 5G’s potential military applications, specifically for command and control, autonomous vehicles, logistics and virtual and augmented reality.

“Command and control systems could benefit from the high speed, low latency capability of 5G. For example, the U.S. military currently uses satellite communications for most of its long-distance communications. However, satellites on orbit can significantly increase latency due to the amount of distance a signal needs to travel, causing delays in the execution of military operations,” the report reads.