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NGA CTO Mark Munsell to Retire in November
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NGA CTO Mark Munsell to Retire in November

Mark Munsell, chief technology officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), will retire on Nov. 9 after more than a year in the position and two decades of service in the federal government, FedScoop reported Wednesday.

Munsell, who started his career at NGA in 1996, assumed the CTO role in February 2019 and led the development of the agency’s first technology strategy.

He previously served as deputy director of NGA’s chief information officer and information technology services directorate. He returned to the agency in 2006 after spending a few years as a contractor focused on maritime and flight planning.

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Rep. Jim Langevin: Countries Should Quickly Attribute Cyber Incidents
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Rep. Jim Langevin: Countries Should Quickly Attribute Cyber Incidents

Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., said the international community should speed up attribution of cyber attacks by other countries to implement cyber norms, C4ISRNET reported Wednesday. 

“If you wait two or three years before you can take action, it loses its effectiveness,” Langevin, chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities and a commissioner on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, said Wednesday at the CyberCon event. 

“The message needs to move quickly if you want it to be heard.” He believes that countries should leverage human and signals intelligence and other cyber resources and be more willing to publicly attribute cyber incidents. Langevin wants to focus more on cyber threats facing the country. 

“I really also hope that a Biden administration will leverage the State Department and [be] more forward-leaning [in] working with our international partners and allies in establishing rules of the road,” he said. “Beyond that, I also hope that a new bureau of cyberspace security and emerging technologies headed by an assistant secretary at the State Department will be created.”

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DHS S&T Tackles Driving Distraction Issue Affecting Patrol Operations
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DHS S&T Tackles Driving Distraction Issue Affecting Patrol Operations

The Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology (DHS S&T) Directorate has launched an effort to address driving distractions that affect the safety of law enforcement personnel. 

The Advanced Decision Support for Public Safety—Preventable Law Enforcement Distracted Driving project will virtually gather patrol officers and supervisors from the U.S. and Canada to discuss the issue of driving distractions, DHS said Tuesday.

This effort will address an issue, which according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, has caused almost 40 percent of police deaths between 2005 and 2017. These distractions are often caused by the multitude of systems used in patrol operations.

“With over 35 years of driver training experience, I have grown concerned with the dangerous mix of new recruits with limited driving experience and the requirement to manage multiple police data sources, all with the expectation of safely controlling their patrol vehicle,” said Albert Liebno, executive director of the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commissions.

S&T's partners on the effort include Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and various stakeholders from government, industry and academia.

“Based on the information and input received in these early stages of the project, in coming months, first responders, technologists and innovators will all have opportunities to present low-cost, easily-implemented ideas and solutions for consideration and evaluation by law enforcement,” said Jim Grove, S&T's portfolio manager for efforts associated with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers.

The effort's resulting data would inform policy recommendations and technology assessments.

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JAIC Achieves Milestones After a Year of CoE Partnership; Bob De Luca Quoted
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JAIC Achieves Milestones After a Year of CoE Partnership; Bob De Luca Quoted

The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) celebrates a new milestone with the achievement of five operational goals resulting from Centers of Excellence partnerships.

JAIC has designed an agile procurement approach for AI, implemented data management procedures and consolidated activities for infrastructure support and program management, the General Services Administration (GSA) said Tuesday.

The center has also delivered AI and machine learning development environments for the Joint Common Foundation, an AI development space made for the military.

Lastly, JAIC contributed to the establishment of the First Five Consortium, an organization made to support humanitarian assistance and disaster response efforts via AI technologies.

“The CoE and the JAIC continue to showcase what’s possible in the federal space when agencies come together to accelerate modernization thinking and best practices,” said Bob De Luca. acting deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) and director of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services.

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NSA Engages in Partnerships to Support 5G Network Security
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NSA Engages in Partnerships to Support 5G Network Security

The National Security Agency talked about its efforts to bolster 5G security, as part of the nearly concluded National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

NSA said Tuesday that it partners with industry and other government entities to protect the emerging 5G technology that the agency believes will influence national security operations.

The agency's engagements in this effort address the areas of analytics, cloud, threats and standards associated with 5G.

Experts from NSA's Enduring Security Framework team are working with partners to address these areas and improve the 5G infrastructure's threat modelling, detection and recovery capabilities.

Additionally, NSA's Center for Cybersecurity Standards works with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project and other organizations to support 5G security.

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Merel Ekelhof Joins JAIC as Foreign Exchange Officer; Lt. General Michael Groen Quoted
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Merel Ekelhof Joins JAIC as Foreign Exchange Officer; Lt. General Michael Groen Quoted

Merel Ekelhof, formerly an artificial intelligence innovation manager at the Defense Materiel Organization Joint IV Commando in the Netherlands, has been appointed foreign exchange officer at the Department of Defense's (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC).

Ekelhof will handle issues on AI ethics, policy, governance and international partnerships as part of the center's strategy and policy team, JAIC said Monday.

Prior to her previous capacity, the certified NATO Joint Force Air Component targeteer advised the Dutch government on matters linked with autonomous weaponry. She also served as the lead researcher for AI and autonomy at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

“We are pleased to welcome Merel to the JAIC team and we look forward to leveraging her knowledge and expertise in artificial intelligence and autonomy,” said Lt. General Michael Groen, director at JAIC.

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CISA, FBI, USCYBEROM Issue Warning on ‘Kimsuky’ North Korean-Backed Hacking Group
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CISA, FBI, USCYBEROM Issue Warning on ‘Kimsuky’ North Korean-Backed Hacking Group

The FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and U.S. Cyber Command Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) have issued a joint advisory to warn the public of a North Korean-linked hacking group called Kimsuky.

The advanced persistent threat (APT) group uses social engineering and spearphishing tactics to infiltrate U.S. systems, according to the notice dated Tuesday.

CISA, FBI and CNMF utilized data from intelligence reporting and open-source databases to consolidate Kimsuky’s tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP).

Kimsuky has also used stolen web hosting credentials to disseminate threats and created subdomains to mimic websites such as Google and Yahoo.

According to the advisory, Kimsuky conducts intelligence collection operations against organizations and individuals in the U.S., Japan and South Korea. The APT group was most likely launched in 2012, the notice states.

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Lt. Gen. John Morrison on Army IT Office’s Multidomain Ops, Unified Network Goals
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Lt. Gen. John Morrison on Army IT Office’s Multidomain Ops, Unified Network Goals

Lt. Gen. John Morrison, deputy chief of staff for G-6 at the U.S. Army, said his office is working to create a centralized network, accelerate cyber investments, reform cybersecurity and launch multidomain operations.

Morrison told reporters last week that the G-6 office intends to deploy the unified network to support globally dispersed forces in mutlidomain environments, C4ISRnet reported Tuesday.

His office will also work to integrate the tactical and enterprise networks in collaboration with the Network Cross-Functional Team as well as the Program Executive Offices (PEO) for Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) and Command, Control, Communications-Tactical (C3T).

“That means making sure that we have signal and cyber, underpinned by intelligence, operating in a combined arms fashion in cyberspace to include electromagnetic spectrum,” he noted.

Morrison received President Trump’s nomination for his current role at the new information technology office in July 2020.

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CMS, IRS Senior Leaders Talk Using AI to Automate Data Processing, Fraud Detection
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CMS, IRS Senior Leaders Talk Using AI to Automate Data Processing, Fraud Detection

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is looking into consolidating its enterprise data in addition to using artificial intelligence and machine learning for fraud detection activities.

Bobby Saxon, deputy chief information officer at CMS, said at an ACT-IAC event that  the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unit intends to implement automation for various agency use cases in three to six months, Federal News Network reported Tuesday. CMS is also planning to launch personnel data literacy programs on a tiered basis, he noted.

According to Saxon, CMS wants to address redundancies that result from the disparate nature of the agency’s data repositories including data lakes and warehouses.

Aside from CMS, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is also looking into leveraging AI for tax and financial records processing as the agency continues to migrate workloads to a Pegasystems-built cloud envronment.

“IRS has several legacy systems that are often disparate and disconnected,” said Mitchell Winans, a senior adviser for the IRS Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management Office, at the same event.

He noted that the goal is to use AI to “monitor the different systems as one larger, interdependent network”.

CMS, IRS Senior Leaders Talk Using AI to Automate Data Processing, Fraud Detection

Katherine Arrington, chief information security officer (CISO) for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition (OUSDA) for the Department of Defense (DoD) and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, will be featured as the keynote speaker for the Fall 2020 CMMC Forum. Click here to register for the Fall 2020 CMMC Forum.

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DLT Solutions Wins Spot on $13B ITES-SW2 Contract to Provide COTS Software; Chris Wilkinson Quoted
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DLT Solutions Wins Spot on $13B ITES-SW2 Contract to Provide COTS Software; Chris Wilkinson Quoted

DLT Solutions has been awarded a spot on the five-year, $13 billion Information Technology Enterprise Solutions – Software 2 (ITES-SW2) contract by the U.S. Army’s Computer Hardware Enterprise Software and Solution (CHESS) office, the company reported on Wednesday. There is a five-year option term from Aug. 31, 2025, through Aug. 30, 2030.

“The addition of this contract vehicle to DLT’s portfolio increases our channel partners’ ability to supply the U.S. Army and other federal agencies with the solutions they need to enable their technology modernization roadmaps and build out their enterprises,” said Chris Wilkinson, president, DLT Solutions, a Tech Data company.

Under the contract, the U.S. Army and other federal agencies will be able to procure commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software and maintenance services. The services span across 14 product categories that align with the major software categories identified by the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM).

“The ITES-SW2 contract also ensures these federal agencies have simplified access to the latest software and services to support their missions at home and abroad,” Wilkinson added.

The other companies on the contract award include AppDynamics, Appian, Archibus, Autodesk, Automation Anywhere, Blackboard, Checkmarx, Cloudbees, Cloudera, Crowdstrike, D2iQ, DataRobot, Data Walk, Infor, Inquisient, LogRhythm, McAfee, Netscout, One Identity, Parasoft, Quest, Red Hat, Sonatype, Sysdig, Tripwire, Uptake and Xebia Labs. New technology vendors can be added over the life of the contract.

About DLT Solutions

DLT Solutions is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tech Data, the world’s leading end-to-end distributor of technology products, services and solutions. DLT is the premier government solutions aggregator that specializes in understanding the IT needs of the federal, state, local and education markets.

We help simplify the process for independent software vendors, federal systems integrators and value-added resellers doing business in the public sector. Leveraging Tech Data’s end-to-end portfolio, an extensive array of public sector contract vehicles, and dedicated channel and enablement services, DLT provides government agencies and channel partners with the means to rapidly and cost effectively transform technology to achieve mission success.

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