Dave Zvenyach, director of the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Technology Transformation Services (TTS) organization, said the agency is looking to modernize Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) processes with automation technology.

Zvenyach noted that FedRAMP, which set a standardized assessment and certification approach for cloud offerings, generates nonlinear costs as the agency onboards more providers into the program.

Zvenyach added that automating the cloud security authorization process will serve as one way to drive the reuse of authorized cloud products.

In Dec. 2019, the FedRAMP management office reached a milestone with the development of an Open Security Controls Assessment Language (OSCAL) in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and industry partners.

The OSCAL standard is designed to automatically publish, implement and assess security controls.

Dan Chenok, executive director of the IBM Center for the Business of Government, said a new report presents recommendations for how defense organizations can field artificial intelligence and one of those is building awareness and understanding of AI.

Organizations seeking to bend the learning curve as they work to apply AI capabilities should engage leaders with experience in AI adoption and development of employees with AI expertise, Chenok wrote in a blog post published Wednesday.

He noted that the report calls on defense agencies to explore a range of opportunities to leverage AI and prepare the organization for the AI journey to realize the technology’s potential benefits.

“An active change management plan would enable success for organizational strategies for leveraging AI, one that also increases awareness at all organizational levels around digital transformation and new and emerging technologies,” Chenok wrote.

The recommendations are part of the report titled Deploying AI in Defense Organizations released by the IBM Center and the IBM Institute for Business Value on Wednesday. The report highlights insights from a 2020 survey of 250 defense technology leaders worldwide about how their organizations implement AI.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said advancing modernization programs will be her top priority to enable the service to meet future challenges.

“I am committed to continue transforming our forces to be able to compete, deter, and if necessary fight and win across the multi-domain battlefield,” Wormuth wrote in a letter released Tuesday on the Army website.

“The Army must be manned, trained, equipped, and modernized to be ready to fight today, but also to meet the demands of an uncertain and unpredictable future,” she added.

Wormuth said she intends to prioritize talent recruitment, development training and retention efforts to maintain the Army’s position as the “world’s premier land force.”

“I will ensure the Army continues to adapt and stay ahead of the capabilities of our adversaries, whether they are near peer nations or newly emergent threats, while also competing successfully below the threshold of conflict,” she noted.

She added that she will continue to pursue improvement efforts for Army health care, housing, childcare and employment opportunities for service personnel’s spouses.

Wormuth was sworn in as the 25th secretary of the Army on Friday a day after the Senate confirmed her for the role.

If you're interested to know more about the Army's information technology reform efforts, then check out GovCon Wire's Army: IT Management and Transformation Forum coming up on June 17th. 

Featuring Raj Iyer, chief information officer with the U.S. Army and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, as the keynote speaker, join our event to learn more about the Army’s digital transformation, modernization and cybersecurity initiatives, in addition to how industry can help meet critical missions in 2021 and beyond.

To register for this virtual forum and view other upcoming events, visit the GovCon Wire Events page.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued guidance meant to help network defenders on how to better use the Mitre ATT&CK framework to analyze and report on cybersecurity threats.

Mitre said Wednesday CISA teamed up with the Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute – a federally funded research and development center operated by Mitre for the Department of Homeland Security – to develop the guidance.

The document titled Best Practices for MITRE ATT&CK Mapping provides cyberthreat intelligence analysts with tips, strategies and instructions for detecting adversary behaviors in raw data and finished reports.

“Our close and collaborative partnership with HSSEDI enabled us to produce a valuable resource to help entities apply ATT&CK, a framework that can build cyber defenses and resilience,” said Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA.

Mitre’s ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of tactics and techniques used by adversaries and can be used as a foundation to develop threat methodologies and models in government and the private sector.

“Successful applications of ATT&CK should produce an accurate and consistent set of mappings which can be used to develop adversary profiles, conduct activity trend analyses, and be incorporated into reporting for detection, response, and mitigation purposes,” the document reads.

If you want to know more about the latest updates about the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, then check out Potomac Officers Club's CMMC Forum coming up on June 16. To register for this virtual forum and view other upcoming events, visit the POC Events page.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched a competition that invites submissions of inexpensive hardware, software or data analytics platform for monitoring asset movement across the food supply chain. 

The New Era of Smarter Food Safety Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge, a part of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, aims to provide food operators with affordable tracking tools, the agency said Tuesday.

As part of the competition, interested participants from all disciplines will develop their own technologies or create a tool building upon existing systems and datasets.

Submissions, which should include a PowePoint presentation and a YouTube video, must be sent through the precisionFDA cloud-based computing platform on or before July 30th.

A panel of judges formed by various federal government representatives will select up to 12 of the highest-performing entries based on their innovation, affordability, scalability and interoperability, and ability to solve challenges.

The FDA will not hand out cash prizes to the winners, but will instead upload their video entries on the agency website. After the challenge's conclusion, the agency intends to hold a webinar to discuss information on the submitted traceability solutions.

NATO has adopted and employed software that the U.S. military has been using to plan aerial refueling activities since 2017. Kessel Run said on May 25th that its JIGSAW platform demonstrated the ability to facilitate air-to-air refueling planning at NATO's Ramstein Ambition 21 exercise.

JIGSAW, which augments the coordination behind refueling planning, has helped the U.S. Air Force reduce the time needed to plan these missions and save over $500 million worth of fuel.

The exercise marked NATO's first time to use JIGSAW, following the organization's purchase of the software late last year.

NATO's Allied Command Transformation team, which includes Kessel Run members, trained aerial refueling planners and demonstrated JIGSAW's performance during the exercise.

“The coordination between Kessel Run, NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, HBN and the other DoD Agencies involved to see this Foreign Military Sale Case go from an idea, to contract, to delivery in 15 months has been tremendous,” said Scott Willits, Kessel Run's coalition integration lead.

Dave Tremper, who oversees electronic warfare from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said the military needs to treat electronic protection (EP) as a portfolio of features, not systems. 

Tremper, who has listed electronic protection among his priorities, said DOD has lesser chances of succeeding in electromagnetic warfare if EP capabilities are managed across different portfolios, C4ISRnet reported Tuesday.

EP technology protects systems from jamming and signal spoofing. EP's absence in electromagnetic spectrum operations distorts the coordination between communications, radar systems and navigation systems, he said.

“If you take EP out of the EMSO conversation, it breaks down because at that point all we’re talking about is electromagnetic attack, electromagnetic support and spectrum management," Tremper stated.