The U.S. Army will explore ways to bolster the security of command posts through a program that seeks signal concealment technologies, C4ISRnet reported Tuesday. The service branch plans to virtually meet with members of industry to discuss preparations for Capability Set ’23, a future suite of tools envisioned to boost tactical network resiliency.

“Certainly, any time that you adopt a lot of commercial technologies you start to look at how your signature is on the battle space," Brig. Gen. Rob Collins, who leads Army Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T).

The effort will seek technologies that conceal visual profile, electromagnetic spectrum presence and infrared emission. The preliminary design review for Capability Set ’23 is scheduled to commence in April. 

"I really look to industry and how they can bring some of their best ideas and technologies for how we can potentially do spectrum obscuration, as well as decoys so we can minimize our footprint on the battlefield," BG Collins said on Tuesday during Potomac Officers Club's (POC) 'Weaponizing Data Across the Digital Battlefield' Virtual Event as part of POC's Future Battlefield Series. 

In case you missed the virtual event, click here to watch or rewatch all of POC's recent events on-demand. Don't miss Potomac Officers' Club's 'Secure IT Modernization in Today’s Environment' Virtual Event on August 26th. Register here for the event to learn how to COVID-19 has impacted the nation's IT modernization plans and capabilities. 

Will Roper, assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics at the U.S. Air Force and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said the service plans to publish on open source platforms some of its code to generate more insights from the cybersecurity community, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

He said he also expects the Air Force to reassess how it classifies and develops applications to facilitate collaboration with white hat hackers and accommodate bug bounties.

“If a hacker in a foreign nation is able to take our system down in a few hours of conflict then I would be hard-pressed to say that by classifying our systems we did our warfighters the service that they deserve,” Roper said in a virtual press call Friday. “There is a way to have a hybrid model.”

Under the hybrid model, initial software and designs at the conceptual level could be shared with others to address and reduce vulnerabilities as the systems mature into operational platforms.

An upcoming Government Accountability Office (GAO) report will present more than 100 recommendations on how federal civilian agencies can address risks posed by foreign suppliers to their supply chains of information and communications technologies, Nextgov reported Tuesday.

The report, which is slated for release in September 2020, is based on GAO’s analysis of supply chains of 23 civilian agencies in response to the request of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

“The vast majority of agencies lack comprehensive processes in order to effectively manage their supply chains,” Carol Harris, director of GAO's information technology and cybersecurity team, told the publication.

Aside from China, Harris said the pending report also cites other countries in Asia and Europe that pose a concern when it comes to the security of supply chains. She said, “It’s really all over the place. So it’s really critical for agencies to have these supply chain risk management practices in place."

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is collaborating with a national laboratory with the Department of Energy (DoE) to come up with a cyber risk framework to help identify the latest cyber threats facing the country’s critical infrastructure, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

Daniel Kroese, acting deputy assistant director of CISA’s National Risk Management Center, said the National Critical Functions Risk Architecture is a big data platform that will help determine some of the “common pathways” of cyber attacks on telecommunications, finance, energy and other sectors.

“The results of your analysis on there, perhaps we could print out, but I couldn’t just press print on the entire NCF Risk Architecture, because it’s really kind of a big-data, multi-vector solution of stitching together different relational data points and nodes of risk factors across the critical infrastructure community. I think it’s pretty distinct, but certainly not competing in terms of being helpful for resilience for connected systems,” he said of the NCF Risk Architecture during a virtual cybersecurity conference Tuesday.

Kroese said the new framework is part of CISA’s efforts to address areas of “concentrated risk.” He also shared his insights on software assurance and CISA’s work on a vulnerability disclosure platform.