The $1.4 trillion spending package approved by President Trump contains a provision that mandates the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to help local agencies create online portals and email accounts with the .gov domain.

The DOTGOV Online Trust in Government Act, which became law as part of the omnibus bill, is designed to encourage adoption of the trusted domain at the local level to strengthen agencies’ defense against cybercrimes such as ransomware attacks and imposter sites, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said Dec. 28.

Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich.; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; James Lankford, R-Okla.; and Ron Johnson, R-Wis. first introduced the bill in October 2019.

The provision directs the DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to develop an outreach strategy and make resources available to assist local governments in the .gov transition process.

The measure authorizes implementation efforts as an allowable expense under the department’s Homeland Security Grant Program. DHS will also provide allowances to support web domain transition under the Homeland Security Grant Program.

Johnson, who serves as chairman of Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC), said the passage of the bipartisan bill will also “help Americans and businesses know which government websites are legitimate and better prevent them from distributing sensitive information.”

The White House National Space Council has released a new strategy that seeks to protect the Earth and other planetary bodies from biological contamination associated with space exploration activities and ensure safe and sustainable commercialization and exploration of space. 

The National Strategy for Planetary Protection has three objectives and the first calls for the U.S. to avoid “forward contamination” through the development and implementation of risk assessment and science-based guidelines and an update to the interagency payload review process.

The second objective seeks to prevent “backward contamination” through the development of a Restricted Return Program, while the last objective calls for the incorporation of the private sector’s needs and perspective through feedback solicitation and creation of guidelines for private sector activities.

For the first objective, the government should come up with a forward contamination framework and risk-informed decision-making implementation strategies for human missions within one year.

“Meeting the strategy’s objectives will ensure a cohesive national effort that balances scientific discovery, human exploration, and commercial activity in space, while meeting applicable international and domestic obligations,” the strategy’s fact sheet reads.

John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice (DOJ), said the federal government is still in the process of analyzing the damage brought by a massive cyber breach linked to Russia, NPR reported Thursday. Demers shared his observations on threat actors behind the recent hack.

"A lot still to be analyzed in terms of both the scope and depth of this hack," Demers told NPR in an interview. "But as you know, there's a lot of confidential and sensitive information that is transmitted and stored on unclassified systems, a lot of information that would be of interest to a foreign state who was trying to learn about our intentions and our planning." 

"This looks more like what a nation state would traditionally try to do through human means, through spies, but trying to do it through technical means and cyber intrusions," Demers added. 

DOJ launched a program called China Initiative in an attempt to counter the Asian country’s efforts to steal U.S. government secrets and intellectual property. Demers has led the initiative since its inception.

"We do see some other countries engaging episodically in economic espionage, but none of them on the scale and sophistication and persistence of the Chinese government," he said. “It really is an effort to develop the Chinese economy and Chinese companies under this rubric of rob, replicate and replace.”

The U.S. Army continues to develop future capabilities for the service branch’s tactical network team, which includes featuring new waveform technologies in future deliveries of its tools to reduce adversaries’ chances of interfering with communications and improving their capabilities. 

In addition, the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command’s C5ISR (Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) Center is also exploring capabilities that could allow for more secretive communication. 

The C5ISR Center is also working with two companies on two other millimeter wave technologies to solve mobility and range challenges with commercial offerings. Dan Duvak, chief of the C5ISR Center’s Radio Frequency Communications Division, believes WiGig will allow narrow beams that point in a specific direction to help the Army’s command posts evade detection.

“They’re like laser beams being pointed from your router to each user,” Duvak said. “What we see on the battlespace is taking that commercial technology and pairing it with existing Wi-Fi capabilities at command posts. We can now reduce the detectability because we have these small pencil beam-type signals, going just user to user instead of a big bubble of blasting energy.”

A Federal Robotic Process Automation Community of Practice report states that overall RPA program maturity for fiscal year 2020 increased by 70 percent from FY19 as agencies continue to deploy automation in more functional areas. The report found that RPA deployments also reached 460 in FY20 from 219 in the prior fiscal year.

According to the analysis, federal RPA programs have deployed complementary capabilities for process improvement as agencies are increasingly adopting the CoE model for RPA implementation.

Data from the report shows that while agencies reported a strong demand for RPA, incorporating intelligent automation saw limited success due to issues in security requirements.

FY21 efforts must prioritize the standardization of automation authority approvals that involve standard protocols including the security of controlled unclassified information as well as classified or restricted data, the Federal RPA CoP noted.

Adopting sophisticated technology platforms for RPA programs would additionally ensure long-term program capacity and effectiveness, the report states.

“The CoP pursues a two-fold mission to share best practices and lessons learned, as well as to break down common technology and management hurdles that can slow RPA deployment,” said Gerard Badorrek, chief financial officer of the General Services Administration, in the report’s foreword.

The audit comes as part of the Federal RPA CoP’s efforts to measure the maturity of agencies’ RPA programs in line with Cross-Agency Priority Goal 6 or "Shifting from Low to High Value Work.”