Noblis has acquired the cloud and analytics capabilities of Inductive Minds, an expert provider of cloud hosting, systems engineering and analytic services to federal government clients, to enhance Noblis’ portfolio of Department of Defense (DoD) and national security expertise, Noblis reported on Tuesday. 

“We are delighted to welcome this highly skilled group of management and technology consultants to the Noblis family,” said Amr ElSawy, Noblis president and CEO and two-time Wash100 Award winner. “Inductive Minds will accelerate our ability to meet the growing demands of our national security clients.”

Noblis’ purchase will advance its support of intelligence and law enforcement communities by helping agencies identify potential threats, evaluate risks and rapidly respond to unforeseen events. Noblis has technical expertise in providing rapid innovation and applied solutions to address threats. 

The acquisition of Inductive Minds’ cloud and analytics further serve Noblis’ clients critical missions. Inductive Minds has helped solve the government's complex challenges and will add highly skilled technical expertise and advanced technology solutions to Noblis’ portfolio. 

“We bring a deep understanding of the technology challenges faced by national security clients – in particular cloud hosting and analytics,” said John Walker, principal, Inductive Minds. “We’re incredibly excited about joining Noblis.  Their capability depth and scale in the market opens up some amazing opportunities to tackle larger and more complex challenges.”

About Noblis

Noblis is a dynamic science, technology, and strategy organization dedicated to creating forward-thinking technical and advisory solutions in the public interest. We bring the best of scientific thought, management, and engineering expertise together in an environment of independence and objectivity to deliver enduring impact on federal missions. 

Noblis works with a wide range of government clients in the defense, intelligence and federal civil sectors. Together with our wholly owned subsidiary, Noblis ESI, we tackle the nation's toughest problems and apply advanced solutions to our clients' most critical missions.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has identified telecommunications carriers and their affiliates that have reported using equipment and services from Huawei and ZTE in their networks and found that removing or replacing those equipment could cost all identified service providers about $1.8 billion. 

Carriers that appear to be eligible for reimbursement under the Secure and Trusted Communications Network Act of 2019 said that eliminating or replacing those equipment from the two Chinese firms could cost about $1.62B, FCC said Friday.

“By identifying the presence of insecure equipment and services in our networks, we can now work to ensure that these networks—especially those of small and rural carriers—rely on infrastructure from trusted vendors,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

“I once again strongly urge Congress to appropriate funding to reimburse carriers for replacing any equipment or services determined to be a national security threat so that we can protect our networks and the myriad parts of our economy and society that rely upon them,” Pai added.

FCC issued an order in November 2019 to ban the use of the Universal Service Fund to buy any communications equipment or services from companies that pose a national security threat, such as Huawei and ZTE.

The commission’s office of economics and analytics and wireline competition bureau started the supply chain data collection effort in February.

President Trump has signed a new space policy directive outlining a set of principles to protect space systems from cyber threats.

A White House memorandum posted Friday says SPD-5 directs developers to design and operate space systems, software and related infrastructure using cyber-informed, risk-based engineering and come up with cybersecurity plans to prevent unauthorized access and protect against communications jamming and spoofing.

The directive also calls for the adoption of intrusion detection processes, physical security for automated information platforms and appropriate cyber hygiene practices.

Operators and owners of space assets should collaborate to foster the development of best practices and share incident, threat and warning data within the space industry using information sharing and analysis centers and other venues.

“Agencies are directed to work with the commercial space industry and other non-government space operators, consistent with these principles and with applicable law, to further define best practices, establish cybersecurity-informed norms, and promote improved cybersecurity behaviors throughout the Nation’s industrial base for space systems,” the directive reads.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded more than $28 million in funds to nine research teams to support the development of prototypes as part of the second phase of a collaborative accelerator initiative.

The Convergence Accelerator program aims to address national societal issues through the use of collaborative multidisciplinary research efforts, NSF said Thursday.

The selected teams will create approaches in the areas of knowledge networks, future jobs, artificial intelligence and the national talent ecosystem over a 24-month period.

NSF previously awarded $39M to 43 research grants in 2019 under the accelerator program's initial phase for collaborative fundamental scientific exploration efforts.

Douglas Maughan, a program head at NSF, said the 2019 teams managed to build their initial concepts and work with various partners and clients.

The awardees are:

• Eduworks Corp.
• Northwestern University
• Purdue University
• Texas A&M
• University of California Santa Barbara
• University of California San Francisco
• University of Cincinnati
• University of Michigan
• Vanderbilt University

The U.S. Army's Network Cross-Functional Team might adopt satellite communications services as part of a new set of network tools in fiscal year 2023, C4ISRnet reported Thursday. The team, in charge of network modernization, exchanged ideas with industry entities to identify what services can be included in the network capability set for 2023.

The discussions, held Wednesday, considered satellite-as-a-service as one of the Army's network priorities. These capability sets are released every two years, with an upcoming one for fiscal year 2021 that will begin soon. 

The capability set for fiscal 2021 focuses on technologies that address network issues, and the one for 2023 will aim to bolster the Army tactical network's performance.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a new program that aims to reduce the size, weight and power requirements of military technologies through quantum science. The Science of Atomic Vapors for New Technologies (SAVaNT) program would address an equipment-related issue that hinders the transition of quantum research into practical applications, DARPA said Tuesday.

SAVaNT will seek to bolster room-temperature atomic vapors to address complexities that hinder the full leverage of quantum applications.

The use of warm atomic vapors eliminates the need for complex laboratory equipment required in the standard quantum cooling process, DARPA said. The program's challenge is to address the effects of temperature changes on the duration of quantum effects.

“The SAVaNT program will explore a new suite of technologies based on room-temperature atomic vapors to address important gaps for military-relevant applications,” said Tatjana Curcic, program manager of DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.

DARPA will virtually host a proposer's day event for the program on Sept. 3.