CyberCore has recently published a white paper that has analyzed cyber hygiene and highlighted various ways for businesses to improve their cyber posture, the company reported on Monday.

“As we have adapted to changes and remote working, the one thing that wasn’t initially at the top of my mind was Cyber Hygiene,” CyberCore’s director of Business Development and Capture, Jennifer Stacey.

Of the reported cyber practices, CyberCore noted that Identity Theft protection will enable users to monitor financial accounts and credit bureaus using MyIDCare, Experian, Lifelock and Identity Guard. CyberCore also urged businesses to update security software and create strong and unique passwords to mitigate risk.

The company added that two-factor authentication on home laptops and computers, cell phones, and any work or personal accounts will increase security. With the increase of remote work, CyberCore noted that a secure home network, with WPA2 or WPA3 encryption on personal routers, is critical to bolster cyber hygiene.

“[Cyber Hygiene is] practices and steps that individuals (users) need to incorporate into their everyday routine in their usage of electronics to maintain devices, systems, health, and improving one’s online security from bad actors,” added Stacey.

CyberCore reported that users and businesses should update security software regularly and securely store sensitive files. When disposing of sensitive data, CyberCore said that it should be shredded with a shredder that has a rating of PS3 or PS4.

The company noted that implementing and practicing Cyber Hygiene while working from home will enable users to protect personal information and companies’ intellectual property from bad actors.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have conducted initial field tests of a technology designed to locate first responders during emergency response missions even when they are inside a burning building. 

DHS said Friday its science and technology directorate worked with JPL and California-based company Balboa Geolocation to assess the data collection, visualization and tracking features of the Precision Outdoor and Indoor Navigation and Training for Emergency Responders (POINTER) system.

The POINTER technology is intended to use magnetoquasistatic fields and generate 3D-based location data to help first responders find an injured or lost team member.

The team fielded transmitters, receivers and a command station within a five-story, 8K-square-foot representative house and found that the system could detect emergency response personnel at a standoff distance of 70 meters.

POINTER also identified the locations of the first responders in 3D within a one-meter distance across all levels of the facility during the test, where participants wore portable receivers powered by small rechargeable lithium batteries.

According to DHS, the system will undergo operational field tests throughout the year and the department expects the availability of the device by early 2022.

Victoria Coleman, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said DARPA wants to establish a storefront and considers launching a tech accelerator to connect with new companies with innovative technologies, C4ISRNET reported Thursday.

For the storefront, Coleman said she wants it to be a “very casual, informal kind of space” where “people can begin to understand better what our work is, what the opportunities are for them for working with us.”

She said the tech accelerator would “incubate” companies with novel technologies, provide them with mentorship support, workspaces and investments via a national security seed fund and link them to components within the Department of Defense through the Defense Innovation Unit.

“Putting an accelerator on the ground will be really important,” she said. “And of course, you know, Silicon Valley is the first place if you think about it, and that’s right, but it’s not the only place where innovation happens that the department needs to be connected with.”

Coleman will deliver a keynote speech at the Potomac Officers Club’s 7th Annual Defense Research and Development Summit on Jan. 14. The event will highlight the latest R&D priorities within the defense sector and advances and challenges within the development and delivery of innovative platforms.

Click here to register for the 7th Annual Defense R&D Summit.

The U.S. Space Force (USSF) plans to establish its own intelligence center that would represent the service branch in the intelligence community starting this year, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

USSF intends to stand up the National Space Intelligence Center over the year and develop a pair of corresponding analysis squadrons. The space and counter-space analysis squadrons will make up the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, the core component of NSIC.

Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback, director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for the Space Force, said both U.S. Space and Air Forces are making assessments on how to establish the two squadrons as joint centers.

“As a commander, there’s no way that we want to destroy the synergy that comes out of all of these squadrons being able to walk down the hallway and talk to each other,” Lauderback said.

The director added USSF needs more orbital sensors to properly characterize activity in space, something she considers a priority.

The U.S. Army and its partners have created machine learning algorithms designed to help soldiers make decisions in difficult combat situations.

Army Research Laboratory (ARL) partnered with IBM, the University College London and the U.K.'s defense science and technology laboratory to develop the algorithms, the Army said Wednesday.

These algorithms consider response time, resource availability and other factors in making decisions, the Army said Wednesday.

“Example applications of our algorithms include determining which services to run at computational nodes at the tactical edge, deciding whether to dispatch forces to a certain location of interest, etc.” said Shiqiang Wang, a researcher at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. 

The research looked at, among other problems, the case of when an individual must decide whether to download data on the edge of the battlefield, forward requests or utilize a remote service for data processing. Each choice comes with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Kevin Chan, an ARL researcher, said the algorithms perform based on consistency and robustness as performance quantifiers. Consistency measures an algorithm's performance with accurate predictions, and robustness quantifies performance when only inaccurate predictions are available.

“Our algorithms include a control parameter that can trade-off between consistency and robustness," Chan said.

“In this way, we can perform well when the prediction is accurate, and at the same time not too badly when the prediction is inaccurate,” he added.

The team will work further to identify more use cases for the theoretical framework developed through the research.

Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), on Dec. 15 at Eglin AF Base, test-flew a new technology designed to enable semi-autonomous collaboration between multiple weapon units.

An F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft carried then dropped two Collaborative Small Diameter Bombs (CSDBs) that communicated with one another to detect targets, the U.S. Air Force said Thursday.

The CSDBs used a set of engagement rules and preloaded constraint programming to identify a detected jammer as a low-priority target, then communicated again to determine a pair of high-priority targets.

The test, however, experienced improper weapon software loading that led to an error with the weapon navigation system. The system requires updated target information for accurate engagements.

Collaborative systems perform based on predefined programming and must align with this set of rules with every semi-autonomous action.

AFRL worked with Scientific Applications and Research Associates to develop the collaborative weapons under the Air Force Golden Horde Vanguard program.

"Completion of this first mission sets the stage for further development and transition to the warfighter,” said Chris Ristich, director of AFRL's transformational capabilities office.