The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) plans to launch a new Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) initiative to advance the hypersonic missile defense program. MDA decided that it will no longer release a final request for proposals to develop prototypes for a regional glide phase weapons system following a review of requirements, according to a notice published Tuesday.

MDA said it plans a phased approach to GPI development to “deliver increasing regional capabilities” to warfighters and will issue an announcement by the second quarter of fiscal year 2021 to kick off the GPI initiative’s first phase.

“A GPI Document Library will be established to provide both classified and unclassified data to interested offerors,” the notice reads.

In August 2020, Vice Adm. Jon Hill, director of MDA, announced that the agency decided to delay the defensive hypersonic missile design effort to focus on near-term options.

A group of suspected Chinese hackers used a vulnerability in SolarWinds software to breach U.S. government networks and a payroll agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) – National Finance Center (NFC) – was one of the government organizations affected by the cyber attack, Reuters reported Tuesday.

Sources said the operation of suspected hackers from China was different from the one carried out by threat actors allegedly linked to Russia because it exploited a different flaw in SolarWinds Orion code to compromise and penetrate deeply into government networks.

The NFC oversees the payroll of several federal agencies, including the FBI and the departments of the Treasury, State and Homeland Security, according to former officials. A spokesman for USDA said the department has informed all customers, including organizations and individuals, whose information has been affected by the SolarWinds Orion compromise.

SolarWinds said it was aware of one customer that was targeted by the second group of threat actors but had “not found anything conclusive” to identify who was behind the attack. The company noted that the hackers failed to access its own systems and that it had issued an update to address the software flaw in December.

AT&T has delivered 5G and multi-access edge computing (MEC) technologies across the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Puget Sound Health Care System, under its partnership with the department, the company reported on Tuesday. AT&T’s MEC has delivered a computer and cellular network architecture to provide real-time, high-bandwidth, low-latency access to latency dependent mobile applications.

“AT&T has installed a full 5G Distributed Antenna System (DAS) encompassing the entire Seattle VA Medical Center… This 5G system allows for increased carrier speeds and provides the next generation of cellular and mobility technology for both veterans and staff,” said Daniel Mesimer, director, WAN/LAN Infrastructure Engineering & Provisioning Solution Delivery, Office of Information and Technology, IT Operations and Services, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

With the new capabilities, VA plans to pilot a variety of healthcare use cases. The VA’s pilots will enable the department to explore and better understand how they can improve healthcare delivery to veterans that use VA healthcare services.

The healthcare-focused use cases could include: mobile-to-mobile connectivity across medical devices; improved medical procedures and training, leveraging emerging technologies; remote and virtual pain management; and remote or near real-time surgical assistance.

In addition, AT&T has installed a 5G Distributed Antenna System (DAS) for use with Sub6 GHz spectrum and  other components to enable 5G. The company’s 5G coverage extends to the VA’s recently opened Mental Health & Research building. AT&T has planned to deploy MEC and 5G millimeter wave spectrum and technologies in 2021, which will increase speeds and improve latency.

“This public-private partnership to test our 5G and MEC capabilities is distinguished by the scope of implementation and innovation it allows, going well beyond a single-room care environment to encompass an entire medical care and training campus. It’s an honor to work with the VA to explore the future of 5G and MEC-powered healthcare innovations,” said Chris Smith, vice president of Civilian and Shared Services, AT&T Public Sector and FirstNet.

Sumo Logic’s Continuous Intelligence Platform has achieved Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Authorization at a Moderate impact level, the company reported on Tuesday.

“Sumo Logic’s powerful Continuous Intelligence Platform (CIP) stands ready to provide the security and operational insights that our Public Sector customers need, said Doug Natal, general manager of Sumo Logic Public Sector,  “The easy deployment, massive-scale and quick return on investment is what delights the IT leadership teams.”

Sumo Logic’s security-by-design approach includes a secure cloud-native, multi-tenant platform that enables data-driven decisions and reduces time to deploy, investigate security and operational issues.

“Our customers will now be able to access the cloud-scale data collection and predictive analytics needed to help make better decisions across DevSecOps initiatives,” Natal added.

With this designation, Sumo Logic will help public sector organizations receive real-time insights into on-premises and cloud environments. The authorization will also strengthen the company’s security and compliance, and optimize performance.

“Sumo Logic has been on a several year journey with FedRAMP, and this is yet another significant step forward to help the federal civilian sector, unclassified DOD and commercial entities get the visibility and continuous intelligence needed to operate in cloud environments,” said George Gerchow, CSO, Sumo Logic.

FedRAMP is a government-wide program that has leveraged a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. The authorization helps government agencies transfer from legacy IT to mission-enabling and secure cloud-based solutions.

About Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic Inc. (Nasdaq: SUMO) is the pioneer in continuous intelligence, a new category of software, which enables organizations of all sizes to address the data challenges and opportunities presented by digital transformation, modern applications, and cloud computing. The Sumo Logic Continuous Intelligence Platform™ automates the collection, ingestion, and analysis of application, infrastructure, security, and IoT data to derive actionable insights within seconds.

More than 2,100 customers around the world rely on Sumo Logic to build, run, and secure their modern applications and cloud infrastructures. Only Sumo Logic delivers its platform as a true, multi-tenant SaaS architecture, across multiple use-cases, enabling businesses to thrive in the Intelligence Economy.

The General Services Administration (GSA) partnered with the U.S. Postal Service to help federal employees update personal identity credentials with ease of access. Federal employees were able to access credentialing services at U.S. post offices under the USAccess Point pilot, an effort to address the limited availability of USAccess credentialing sites, GSA said Monday.

GSA launched the pilot on Nov. 5 and has since helped over 4,000 federal government employees process credentials at U.S. post offices. The pilot stood up credentialing operations across seven post offices within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. These sites include post offices in Suitland, Maryland; and Herndon, Virginia.

“The partnership allows for innovations in the federal shared services model and could lead to offering additional identity management services at USPS sites in the future," said Darlene Gore, director of GSA's identity credential and access management division.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has finalized the results of a recent bug bounty event that tested the effectiveness of new hardware- and firmware-based security technologies. 

The Finding Exploits to Thwart Tampering or FETT bounty discovered 10 vulnerabilities across 980 processors developed under DARPA's System Security Integration Through Hardware and Firmware or SSITH program, the agency said Thursday.

FETT ran from July to October last year with the participation of over 580 cybersecurity experts. DARPA then reviewed the program's findings over three months to determine the final results. Researchers from Synack, a crowdsourced security platform, performed the penetration tests on SSITH technologies.

“The majority of the bug reports did not come from exploitation of the vulnerable software applications that we provided to the researchers, but rather from our challenge to the researchers to develop any application with a vulnerability that could be exploited in contradiction with the SSITH processors’ security claims," said Keith Rebello, the DARPA's program manager for SSITH and FETT.

With FETT concluded, SSITH is now in the final stage where researchers are working to further develop the tested technologies with bolstered security.