The U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) has selected Avaya’s OneCloud portfolio of communications and collaboration solutions to support the agency’s digital transformation initiative, the company reported on Monday. 

“With this long-term contract with SSA, Avaya is delivering a competitive displacement solution that enables the agency to evolve, transform and greatly improve the way they serve the public, to meet their stated goals. We are pleased to partner with Verizon to deliver on this critical mission,” said Jerry Dotson, Avaya VP of Public Sector.

Under the initiative, SSA will modernize the agency’s ability to rapidly respond to changing user needs at manageable cost. Avaya’s solutions will enable the SSA’s to deliver an improved customer experience, across all service channels, securely and efficiently.

SSA recently published its IT modernization plan, which noted its commitment to implement new solutions that enhance the customer experience, address future needs and reduce operating costs by integrating robust and flexible technology. 

The Avaya OneCloud portfolio of solutions for Contact Center, Unified Communications and Collaboration represents the evolution of business communications to a more intelligent platform underpinned by customer-led innovation.

Verizon is the systems integrator working with SSA. Verizon has partnered with Avaya to provide the core communications infrastructure.

“Together with our partners at Avaya, Verizon will support the SSA's mission and deliver critical digital transformation and modernization solutions the SSA needs for the more than 65 million Americans who rely on its services,” said Jennifer Chronis, VP, Federal at Verizon.

About Avaya

Businesses are built by the experiences they provide, and every day millions of those experiences are delivered by Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE: AVYA). Avaya is shaping what's next for the future of work, with innovation and partnerships that deliver game-changing business benefits. 

Our cloud communications solutions and multi-cloud application ecosystem power personalized, intelligent, and effortless customer and employee experiences to help achieve strategic ambitions and desired outcomes. Together, we are committed to help grow your business by delivering Experiences that Matter.

Serena Chan, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) cyber development directorate, said DISA plans to begin testing in January 2021 its enterprise identity, credential and access management (ICAM) prototype with a subset of 13 applications from several Department of Defense (DoD) components, Nextgov reported Friday.

Chan told the publication the ICAM prototype is set to achieve initial operational capability in late December 2020 and the testing with the pilot apps in early 2021 seeks to improve the ICAM platform.

She noted the ICAM project will not completely remove common access cards but will play a key role in advancing DISA’s move to a zero trust framework to improve cybersecurity.

“It’s very important to note that ICAM is foundational to zero trust, I think the fidelity that the ICAM capabilities provide us will greatly help that,” Chan said.

Two officers from the Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Office said the military has extended the scope of efforts to boost defenses against drone threats, Army Times reported Saturday. 

Col. Marc Pelini, division chief for capabilities and requirements at JCO, said Thursday at the Association of the U.S. Army's virtual conference that the office will expand its focus to cover tier III threats. 

The military uses artificial intelligence to simplify the task of countering enemy UAS, including those that threaten tanks and infantry units. This focus expansion would require bolstered threat detection on smaller unmanned aircraft systems. 

Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, JCO director, said the military downselected a list of counter-UAS priorities based on sustainment, effectiveness, usability and integration. 

The downselected list includes mounted and mobile systems, handheld systems and command and control. JCO will conduct an open house on Oct. 30th to assess other options with the help of industry. 

The U.S. Army’s tactical network modernization team has announced plans to integrate wearables into augmented reality combat goggles to increase cybersecurity, C4ISRNET reported on Monday. 

The U.S. Army tactical network modernization team will focus on advancing wearable technology for user authentication. Under current capabilities, users are authenticated through passwords, common access cards or tokens to verify themselves.

Donald Coulter, senior science and technology adviser to the Network Cross-Functional Team, said that  the current capabilities will not suffice in an operational environment. “These can be broken, damaged [or] lost in an operational environment,” Coulter said. “Trying to put in a password with tactical gloves when it’s a tiny keyboard is not an optimal solution.”

With wearable authentication, soldiers' identities are verified by leveraging biometric data including heart rates, gait, unique skin signatures and physical locations, which will increase systems’ security and intuitiveness. 

The U.S. Army has projected that it will leverage biometics and artificial intelligence in the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) to help with navigation, targeting and advanced night and thermal vision. The IVAS effort is led by the Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team.

The U.S. Army reported that the technology will advance service, “especially when you talk about the infusion of more artificial intelligence and machine-learning capacity — to really study, to capture more data and tag it, and really understand the unique characteristics of each person,” Coulter said. “It really gives us more confidence and ability to perform that effectively.”

In addition, wearable technology has the potential to protect communications for manned-unmanned teaming, cyber situational awareness, the squad area network and IVAS radio.

“Over the next year we’ll continue to see more and more technologies getting out of the S&T domain and getting into the [project managers] for final prototyping, experimentation, maturation and integration,” Coulter concluded.

The U.S. Air Force is developing an anti-jam high-frequency radio system meant to enhance the Department of Defense's (DoD) communication capacities with its allies.

Designed for NATO by the Air-to-Ground Tactical Data Links team, the Second Generation Anti-Jam Tactical Ultra-High Frequency Radio will replace an estimated count of over 18K HAVE QUICK II platforms employed by all U.S. military service branches, USAF said Friday.

"What we’re doing for our U.S. version is developing 16 optional modes so that our radio is not only interoperable with our NATO allies, but we have international specification across the entire industry," said Capt. Shaun Perry, a former SATURN program manager.

Mitre collaborated with the Air Force and NATO allies to build an early iteration of SATURN in the 1980's. USAF published the international interoperability specifications for SATURN in a NATO standardization agreement.

The team will utilize the specs to develop its own version of SATURN.