The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a document to guide federal agencies when patching remote devices outside agency networks.

CISA said the Capacity Engagement Guide for Remote Vulnerability and Patch Management seeks to complement the interim Trusted Internet Connections 3.0 telework guidance released in April.

The document presents a scenario where a vulnerability and patch management tool is hosted in an agency-sanctioned cloud environment and enables remote devices to utilize split tunneling to access resources in the cloud.

“Agencies using this approach must ensure that remote device traffic destined for the cloud-based solution is properly constrained to sanctioned destinations and that roaming devices do not connect to unsanctioned resources, i.e., individual software applications are not allowed to directly access and download updates from vendor sites,” the guide reads.

CISA said the guide applies to software on managed end-user government-furnished equipment running on MacOS or Microsoft Windows operating systems and provides a checklist of requirements agencies should meet to facilitate the implementation of the cloud-based remote vulnerability and patch management tool.

The Internal Revenue Service’s newly established enterprise digitalization and case management office has started to adopt an incremental approach to funding information technology modernization programs, including the digitization of paper-based taxpayer services and consolidation of case management platforms, Federal News Network reported Friday.

Harrison Smith, co-director of EDCMO and former deputy chief procurement officer at the IRS, said advancing IT upgrade projects in “smaller chunks” allows the agency to identify viable concepts within months or weeks.

“Identifying opportunities where we can take an informed shot and frankly an informed risk and continue if something works before we really invest a significant amount of money, it’s really a very strong business case for how we’re pursuing things in this office in general,” Smith said.

Smith and EDCMO Co-Director Justin Lewis Abold-LaBreche will oversee the transition of business processes to a Pegasystems-built enterprise case management platform in the cloud.

Abold-LaBreche said the IRS will take about a year to 15 months to finalize the move and EDCMO expects the initial business process to be operational on the cloud-based system by December.

“We have a fast feedback loop all the way to the end-user employee to say, ‘Is this working for you?’ and they’re involved in the development cycle. And then the big picture, we’re tackling business process modernization policy change and technology all at the same time, and we’re doing that in these bite-sized chunks, so it makes big change possible, but in a less risky way,” Abold-LaBreche added.

NASA is terminating plans to develop a “free-flyer” commercial station as part of the agency’s long-term effort to commercialize operations in low-Earth orbit (LEO), SpaceNews reported Thursday.

In October, the agency issued a draft solicitation for the standalone station in LEO as part of Appendix K under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnership (NextSTEP) program.

NASA intends to use NextSTEP technologies to eventually transition commercial operations from the International Space Station (ISS) to industry-built LEO platforms.

Angela Hart, manager for LEO commercialization at NASA, told attendees at the recent ISS Research and Development Conference that the agency is reevaluating its Appendix K solicitation and planning to develop a strategy for related efforts.

“I can’t promise any specific timelines associated with that, but we are definitely working on the free flyer and intend to release a solicitation soon on that once we get our strategy all agreed to internally,” she noted.

Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight programs at NASA, noted that the agency’s long-term goal is to have more than one commercial platform in orbit.

Hart and McAlister’s comments come after NASA awarded Axiom Space a potential $140M contract in March to build a habitation module that will be attached to the ISS.