AT&T announced on Wednesday that the company is adding new features from Cisco to its SD-WAN capabilities. AT&T SD-WAN with Cisco Teleworker solution will provide customers with fast and secure SD-WAN capabilities whose employees work from home.

“AT&T continues to adapt its offerings to align with the customer needs of today, with these enhancements to SD-WAN with Cisco. As a leader in supporting all shapes and sizes of businesses, and the largest SD-WAN provider in North America, we’re giving businesses the tools not just to manage their needs today, but prepare for the future,” commented Will Eborall, AVP of Product Marketing Management for AT&T.

AT&T SD-WAN with Cisco Teleworker solution is designed to allow businesses to quickly stand up and manage remote employees by using the employees’ home internet connection and layers on the full SD-WAN stack with one piece of hardware. It will provide enterprise-grade services without sacrificing performance.

Public sector clients of AT&T SD-WAN with Cisco Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) will enjoy managed, high-performance policy-based service while meeting the FISMA criteria for managing system security and risks.

Customers will also have a co-managed option. This will provide customers the ability to self-manage and control their business application policies. The co-managed option will still rely on AT&T for managed service support for configuration, fault and performance management.

AT&T and Cisco’s product will emphasize security and prioritize business applications over non-business traffic. It is simple to deploy and will give employees visibility into the edge, with near real-time manageability.

“Today’s distributed workforce needs superior home office connectivity that makes working at home just as fluid as being in the office with consistent connectivity, performance and enterprise-grade security. The AT&T SD-WAN with Cisco Teleworker solution meets these requirements by providing an office-like experience to workers while keeping enterprise assets highly secure,” added JL Valente, Cisco’s VP of Product Management, Enterprise Routing and SD-WAN.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a three-part guide designed to help hotels boost the protection of customer data and other contents of their property management systems against cyber threats.

Titled “Securing Property Management Systems,” the guide advises hotel owners on how to cybersecure the systems that hold credit card data and other personal information of guests, NIST said Tuesday.

“Our practice guide documents show we enabled cybersecurity concepts such as zero trust architecture, moving target defense, tokenization of credit card data and role-based authentication in a reference design that addresses cybersecurity and privacy risk,” said Bill Newhouse, a cybersecurity engineer at the agency’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE).

The guide’s first part is an executive summary while the second one features guidance on the approach, architecture and security characteristics hotels should be aware of to reduce risks. The third and final part educates information technology practitioners on how to implement the security recommendations.

Cybersecurity technology providers helped NCCoE and the hospitality business community develop a design that could safeguard information within the PMS and connected IT infrastructure of hotels. The “PMS reference design” could also stop users from accessing various systems and services.

Hospitality is the third among industries that experienced cybersecurity breaches in 2019, according to an industry report. Thirteen percent of the total incidents compromised hotel chains.

A group of six lawmakers has proposed a bipartisan bill that would establish a new office to help strengthen the U.S. manufacturing industry and its workforce and improve the country’s economic competitiveness.

The proposed Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation Policy Act seeks to create a new office led by a chief manufacturing officer to conduct studies and develop a national plan to help ensure U.S. edge in manufacturing, according to a new release published Monday.

The bill would also form the Federal Strategy and Coordinating Council on Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation and establish a National Medal of Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation to acknowledge contributions to the field.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, introduced the measure with Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Chris Coons, D-Del., and Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio.

"The Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation will work to coordinate existing federal programs and resources for manufacturers, while providing the President with analysis and perspective," said Portman. "Much like the National Security Advisor, the Chief Manufacturing Officer will create a strategic plan to ensure our nation’s manufacturing and industrial sector remains world-class."

White House officials on Tuesday briefed lawmakers on a potential $2 trillion infrastructure plan that would fund electric vehicles, public transit, highways, electrical grid and water systems upgrades, broadband internet expansion and semiconductor research efforts, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

President Biden is scheduled to discuss his administration’s infrastructure package during his speech on Wednesday in Pittsburgh. The package will be the first of a two-part program that seeks to reshape U.S. economic policy and compete with China.

WSJ cited sources that say the infrastructure package would be covered by tax increases, including a rise in corporate tax rate and overseas earnings of companies.

Senior White House aides said they expect Congress to pass the infrastructure bill by summer. The Biden administration plans to release a second proposal focused on child care, education and health care in April as part of the two-part program.

Tyndall Air Force Base received the first batch of semi-autonomous robot dogs designed by Immersive Wisdom and Ghost Robotics for the U.S. Air Force's 325th Security Forces Squadron. 

The Quad-legged Unmanned Ground Vehicles can navigate on difficult terrains and come with 14 sensors each to allow a situational awareness coverage of 360 degrees, USAF said Monday. Q-UGVs also feature crouch and high-step modes as well as the capacity to endure a temperature range of minus 40 to 131 degrees.

"They can patrol the remote areas of a base while defenders can continue to patrol and monitor other critical areas of an installation," said Mark Shackley, security forces program manager at Tyndall AFB's program management office.

Tyndall AFB have been working with various organizations such as the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the 325th Civil Engineer Squadron since July to develop the Q-UGVs.