The Department of Energy (DOE) will invest $54 million in microelectronics research pursued by the national laboratories, which may apply for three-year awards under the new funding opportunity.

DOE said Wednesday that it will conduct a peer review to determine the awardees, with $36 million of the funds being dependent on congressional approval. Microelectronics research has the potential to catalyze innovative technologies, with applications in energy grid efficiency and clean energy, according to DOE.

“Thanks to microelectronics, transformational technologies that used to swallow up entire buildings now fit in the palms of our hands—and it’s time to take this work to the next level,” said Jennifer Granholm, secretary of Energy.

Executives from the military and the defense industry met virtually on March 17 and 18 to discuss how digital transformation bolsters national security. The New Horizons 2021 event's first week covered presentations and talks on cloud, digital engineering, edge computing, open architecture and agile software, the U.S. Air Force said Tuesday.

The Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association sponsored the event, which also discussed the Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept of a sensor-driven battlefield.

“We’re building and outfitting the DevSecOps (Development, Security and Operations) platform for all to use, with the security requirements and tools built in so the Air Force and Department of Defense don’t have to continually develop new DevSecOps platforms," said Maj. Gen. Michael Schmidt, program executive officer for command, control, communications, intelligence and networks at Hanscom Air Force Base.

Schmidt manages a $12 billion portfolio that includes digital, communications and information technologies.

Cloud Lake Technology, a subsidiary of Akima, has achieved a bronze partnership with Scaled Agile, the certifying body of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Akima announced Thursday.

“We understand that technology is ever-changing, and our teams are committed to staying at the forefront of these advances,”said Barry Smallwood, president of Akima’s Emerging Markets Group. “Relentless improvement will always be our focus in order to continue delivering the high-quality products and services our customers require.”

As a Scaled Agile partner, SAFe will enable Cloud Lake to deliver innovative, high-quality solutions to their military and federal civilian customers more rapidly.

This bronze partnership comes exactly a month after the company received its ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018 certification that certified Cloud Lake Technology’s best-in-class approach for delivering complex  IT service management to customers.

Cloud Lake Technology was also one of the first in the U.S. to achieve CMMI maturity level 3 for development  and services under the new assessment method, version 2.0.

About Cloud Lake Technology

Cloud Lake Technology is an 8(a) company and wholly owned subsidiary of Akima, an Alaska Native Corporation (ANC), specializing in delivering optimized mission performance through advanced technologies and systems.

We offer highly specialized, digital services that enable customers to quickly and cost-effectively harvest, analyze, and leverage the greatest possible value from the increasingly vast amounts of data they are required to manage.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has called on the federal government to accelerate efforts to carry out critical actions to address major cybersecurity challenges.

There are four major cyber challenges the government should address and these are establishing comprehensive cybersecurity strategy and performing effective oversight, securing federal systems and information, protecting cyber critical infrastructure and safeguarding privacy and sensitive data, according to a GAO report published Wednesday.

The GAO report listed 10 critical actions to help the country deal with cyber threats, including mitigation of global supply chain risks, the need to address cyber workforce management challenges and improvements in the government's response to cyber incidents.

For instance, the congressional watchdog cited the need to define and establish a central role to oversee the implementation of a national cyber strategy and recommended that Congress propose a measure to create a position within the executive office of the president to lead the effort.

In January 2021, Congress responded to GAO’s recommendation with the creation of the office of the national cyber director within the White House.

“Once the position is filled, the federal government will be better situated to direct activities to overcome the nation’s cyber threats and challenges, and to perform effective oversight,” the GAO report reads.

According to the report, GAO has made approximately 3,300 recommendations to help agencies address lapses in cybersecurity since 2010. Of those recommendations, over 750 are not yet implemented as of Dec. 2020.

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is exploring advances in non-linear optics and integrated photonics in support of the development of microwave oscillators that potentially meet the compact-size, tuning and robustness requirements while staying in ultra-low-noise level. 

DARPA said Tuesday that the Generating RF with Photonic Oscillators for Low Noise research program will be two-pronged, with the first area of focus being the prototyping, testing and maturation of a compact microwave oscillator capability with low phase noise.

The fundamental limits of photonic microwave generation will be the focus of the second research area. An order of magnitude leap in size, phase noise or frequency span will be sought from research teams.

“By implementing advances in photonic microwave generation with integrated photonics, we see a pathway to create a significant leap in microwave oscillator capability, while simultaneously realizing characteristics not found in today’s products: very low phase noise, compact form factor, ultra-wideband tuning, and environmental robustness,” said Gordon Keeler, program manager at DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office.

The agency will hold a virtual proposers day on April 8 to answer questions from potential offerors and provide them with more information about the GRYPHON initiative. Proposers will also be given an opportunity to highlight their capabilities and form potential partnerships.

DARPA is expected to release a broad agency announcement on the Beta SAM website before the proposers day.

Alma Cole, chief information security officer of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), said migrating network user identities to the cloud from legacy systems is key to enabling the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to have a zero-trust security, FedScoop reported Wednesday.

He pointed out during a virtual cybersecurity event that DHS agencies have disconnected services for usernames and passwords. However, Cole added that having “cloud-first” identities could allow for more secure connections with other agencies and DHS’ external partners.

The official said the department would then be able to control which network portions can be accessed by on-premise and external users.

DHS is considering secure access service edge cloud services as a replacement of its virtual private network used by remote workers and other offsite users. A comply-to-connect framework, a network access control system and a software-defined network are also planned for on-premise user access.

“That is probably the first real, meaningful way to start implementing some hard, zero-trust access control policies and really lock down your agency,” said Cole. He also called for expanded guidance on zero-trust security at the federal level.