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Final Rule Authorizing CMMC Req’s for DoD Contracts Takes Effect; Katie Arrington Quoted
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Final Rule Authorizing CMMC Req’s for DoD Contracts Takes Effect; Katie Arrington Quoted

A rule finalizing the Department of Defense’s (DoD) implementation of Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) requirements in DoD contracts has taken effect following delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, FedScoop reported Tuesday. The DoD first published the CMMC requirements in early 2020.

The Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) rule change finalizes the requirement for contractors to pass CMMC assessments based on five levels of cyber maturity. Information on contractor assessments will be housed in the Enterprise Mission Assurance Support Services database, according to DoD officials.

Katie Arrington, chief information security officer of defense for acquisition and sustainment and a 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, said at an AFCEA event that the Pentagon plans to issue a press release on contracts that will initially require CMMC certification.

The Pentagon plans to enact a five-year rollout plan for the CMMC effort to help contractors prepare for assessments and secure certification, according to the report.

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Accenture Promotes Executives to Leadership Roles; Julie Sweet Quoted
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Accenture Promotes Executives to Leadership Roles; Julie Sweet Quoted

Accenture has promoted 605 people to managing director, and the appointment by the CEO of 63 people to senior managing director. With the recent executive moves, Accenture has appointed a record percentage of women and spearheaded a new goal for increasing gender representation.

“These promotions and appointments are a recognition of the tremendous difference these leaders are making for our people, clients, shareholders, partners and communities,” said Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture. “We thank each of them for their contributions, celebrate their career milestones — and look forward to their inspiring leadership and bold innovation to create even greater value.”

Thirty-nine percent of all promotions to managing director are women, up from 36 percent in 2019, and 29 percent of all appointments to senior managing director are women, up from 19 percent in 2019. Accenture has achieved its goal of 25 percent women managing directors globally by the end of 2020 and has set a new goal of 30 percent by 2025.

“All of these extraordinary leaders have stepped up to work in new ways and collaborate as one Accenture,” said Ellyn Shook, Chief Leadership and Human Resources Officer of Accenture. “Each of these people exemplifies inclusive leadership and deep compassion — demonstrating that how one leads is just as important as the value they deliver to benefit all of our stakeholders.”

About Accenture

Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services — all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers.

Our 506,000 people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities.

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AWS Collaborates with BlackBerry to Develop Intelligent Vehicle Data Platform
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AWS Collaborates with BlackBerry to Develop Intelligent Vehicle Data Platform

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and BlackBerry Limited announced a multi-year, global agreement to develop and market BlackBerry's Intelligent Vehicle Data Platform (IVY), AWS reported on Tuesday. 

“This software platform promises to bring an era of invention to the in-vehicle experience and help create new applications, services, and opportunities without compromising safety, security, or customer privacy. We are pleased to expand our relationship with AWS to execute this vision and deliver BlackBerry IVY,” said John Chen, executive chairman and CEO, BlackBerry. 

IVY is a scalable, cloud-connected software platform that will allow automakers to provide a consistent and secure way to read vehicle sensor data, normalize it and create actionable insights from that data both locally in the vehicle and in the cloud. 

BlackBerry IVY will apply machine learning (ML) to data to generate predictive insights and inferences to derive action based on those insights. The solution will support multiple vehicle operating systems and multi-cloud deployments in order to ensure compatibility across vehicle models and brands. 

It will build upon BlackBerry QNX’s capabilities for surfacing and normalizing data from automobiles and AWS’s broad portfolio of services, including capabilities for IoT and machine learning. IVY will run inside a vehicle’s embedded systems, but will be managed and configured remotely from the cloud. 

“AWS and BlackBerry are making it possible for any automaker to continuously reinvent the customer experience and transform vehicles from fixed pieces of technology into systems that can grow and adapt with a user’s needs and preferences,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS.

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Army, Academia Jointly Study New Variable Speed Concept for Aircraft
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Army, Academia Jointly Study New Variable Speed Concept for Aircraft

The U.S. Army partnered with Brown University and Iowa State University to develop a method that allows aircraft to adjust rotors automatically in-flight for augmented turbine performance.

Army Research Laboratory (ARL), part of the service's Combat Capabilities Development Command, worked with academia to create a new concept in the area of variable speed, the Army said Tuesday.

“The variable speed concept improves performance by maintaining blade aerodynamic efficiency within the optimum range at all operating conditions,” said Luis Bravo, aerospace engineering researcher at the Army.

A research paper titled “Optimizing gas turbine performance using the surrogate management framework and high-fidelity flow modeling” contains the team's published findings on the topic.

The team will further mature the study through the development and testing of a prototype that embodies the concept.

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GSA Looks to Release Handbook on RPA Monitoring, Access Mgmt
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GSA Looks to Release Handbook on RPA Monitoring, Access Mgmt

The General Services Administration (GSA) plans to publicly release a handbook to help agencies seeking to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) into their operations, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

GSA’s Identity Assurance and Trusted Access Division developed the Digital Worker Credentialing Handbook which outlines procedures for deploying bots or “digital workers” based on level of supervision. The handbook also includes recommendations for periodic assessments on digital workers' access privileges.

Daria Medved, deputy director for emerging technology at GSA, said at an Advanced Technology Advanced Research Center event that the handbook seeks to ensure that the right controls are in place and that validations for bots are monitored.

Ken Myers, cyber policy and strategy planner at the agency, said communities of interest can work to establish ethical guidelines for the assessment of these digital workers.

“We found that a lot of agencies were using human-based identity processes to credential a digital worker, and it doesn’t always doesn’t always work like that," he noted. “There’s some things that are specific to humans that don’t correlate to a digital identity.”

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NASA to Fund Space Tech Projects from Small Businesses
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NASA to Fund Space Tech Projects from Small Businesses

NASA has earmarked $14M in grants through the second phase of the Small Business Technology Transfer program to support 19 projects that aim to speed up the agency's science, aeronautics, space technology and human exploration efforts.

Seventeen companies will secure up to $750,000 to build and demonstrate their Phase I proposals, NASA said Wednesday.

The awardees explored the feasibility of their proposals during the initial phase of the STTR program and were selected based on various criteria such as technical merit and facilities.

Multi3D Inc., H2O Insights and Plasma Processes are among the small businesses chosen by the agency for Phase II. NASA's Ames Research Center manages the STTR program.

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DoD to Support STEM Research Projects in $50M Funding Effort
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DoD to Support STEM Research Projects in $50M Funding Effort

The Department of Defense (DoD) will award $50 million in funds through the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program to 150 university researchers to support the acceleration of research activities in machine learning, quantum sciences and hypersonics. 

The funding opportunity will also back projects that will explore the design, development and characterization of various materials, DoD said Tuesday. DoD issued a solicitation areas of engineering and foundational science.

The awardees were selected via a competitive process launched by the U.S. Army Research Office, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Office of Naval Research.

Bindu Nair, director at the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering's basic research office, said DoD seeks to field scientific approaches that will prepare potential science, technology, engineering and mathematics professionals throuh the funding effort.

According to DoD, the team received 742 proposals for the solicitation while funding requests have reached a total of $297M.

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Veritone Advances AI Analytics and Applications; Ryan Steelberg Quoted
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Veritone Advances AI Analytics and Applications; Ryan Steelberg Quoted

Veritone has made recent enhancements to Veritone Discovery and Veritone Attribute, the company’s campaign analytics and attribution applications. With the upgrades, customers will expand advanced media search functionalities, advertising performance reporting and visualization that help drive revenue growth. 

Veritone Discovery is an AI-powered campaign search and analysis application designed to provide visibility into content performance. The company has updated the tool to feature Earned Media Monitoring that will enable users to track the added value they deliver in campaigns.

The company’s solution has also added New Reporting Customization will classify and summarize campaign results based on its components. Veritone’s enhanced AI Models will provide additional accuracy of key words and phrases, and expand support for foreign languages.

Veritone Attribute is an AI-enabled broadcast attribution application that correlates broadcast advertising placements with website interaction data in near real-time. Veritone has added new enhancements to its enterprise management and workflows, and advanced collaboration capabilities. 

Additionally, Veritone Attribute has integrated intelligent analytics, which include multi-dimensional charts and responsive data views, as well as improved analytics capabilities. 

“Our already comprehensive campaign search and analytics applications keep evolving as we work closely with our customers to continuously identify opportunities to help automate their processes,” said Ryan Steelberg, president of Veritone.

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Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais: Army to Speed up Development of New Training Platform
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Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais: Army to Speed up Development of New Training Platform

Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais, director of the U.S. Army's synthetic training environment (STE) cross-functional team (CFT), said the service branch is working to accelerate the development of a new virtual simulation platform, National Defense Magazine reported Tuesday.

“Senior leaders have directed that the modernization of our live training effort be accelerated because our projected initial operating capability of fiscal year '26 and our full operational capability in fiscal year '30 … was too long,” she said Tuesday at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference.

The Army envisions STE to provide expanded virtual training across the force and meet future requirements that the service's existing training platform cannot. 

Gervais noted that the Army needs a family of emerging technology systems that can operate alongside legacy systems. This new training platform would combine live and synthetic systems.

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Debra Daniels: DISA Funnels $7.6B to Support Small Business Suppliers in FY 2020
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Debra Daniels: DISA Funnels $7.6B to Support Small Business Suppliers in FY 2020

Debra Daniels, vice procurement services executive at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), said in an interview that the agency has obligated $7.6 billion to support small businesses in the defense industrial base this fiscal year.

That amount represents a significant increase from FY 2019 and comes as part of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) efforts to address pressing information technology and cyber needs in addition to pandemic-related matters, Daniels told C4ISRnet in an interview published Tuesday.

“DISA never shut down during the pandemic,” said Daniels, who also serves as deputy director of the Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization (DITCO).

“We just moved from a federal workspace to our own home workspaces and kept going. And what I can say about the contracting force is they never lost momentum, they never lost focus on the priorities at all in doing that.”

Speaking about the DoD’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program, Daniels noted that DISA’ s Procurement Services Directorate is “definitely working to understand” rules under the new contractor vetting initiative.

She noted that DISA plans to brief industry on its future program requirements during the agency's upcoming virtual Forecast to Industry event.

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