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Mark Menezes Confirmed for DOE Deputy Secretary Role; Dan Brouillette Quoted
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Mark Menezes Confirmed for DOE Deputy Secretary Role; Dan Brouillette Quoted

The U.S. Senate has granted Mark Menezes, undersecretary of Energy, the confirmation to serve as the Department of Energy’s (DoE) deputy secretary. Menezes will undergo a swearing-in for his new role at a future date to be announced, DOE said Tuesday.

“Mark’s years of experience forming energy policy on Capitol Hill and advocating for sensible energy strategies in the private sector make him extremely well-suited to take on this role,” said Dan Brouillette, secretary of Energy.

Menezes formerly served as chief counsel for energy and environment with the U.S. House of Representatives’ energy and commerce committee. He has also held roles with energy holding companies Berkshire Hathaway Energy and Central and South West.

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Stephen Forbes Takes Blackjack Program Manager Role at DARPA
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Stephen Forbes Takes Blackjack Program Manager Role at DARPA

Stephen Forbes, deputy program manager for the Blackjack initiative at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has been appointed to lead the program, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.

Forbes will replace Paul Thomas, who is slated to depart from DARPA to join the private sector. Prior to DARPA, Forbes served as senior research aerospace engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) flight experiments division.

The Blackjack program aims to field and demonstrate the capability of small satellites in low-Earth orbit. Forbes said in a webinar the agency seeks to determine an approach that will allow the Department of Defense (DoD) to leverage LEO space services.

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American Systems Receives James S. Cogswell Award for Achievement in Industrial Security; Peter Smith Quoted
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American Systems Receives James S. Cogswell Award for Achievement in Industrial Security; Peter Smith Quoted

American Systems announced on Wednesday that the company’s facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico has received the prestigious 2020 James S. Cogswell Award for security excellence from the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA). 

“We are proud to be recognized with this prestigious award that acknowledges their dedication to their craft—we know what’s at stake,” said Peter Smith, president and CEO of American Systems and three-time Wash100 Award recipient. 

The James S. Cogswell Award is the most prestigious honor the DCSA can bestow to the cleared industry. Of the more than 12,000 cleared contractors in the National Industrial Security Program, less than 1% are annually selected to receive this award. 

“As a federal contractor supporting national priority programs, the importance of safeguarding our country’s classified information is paramount to the safety of our warfighters and citizens. Our security department, top to bottom, is second to none,” said Smith. 

The company’s Albuquerque facility was one of 61 chosen from approximately 12,500 cleared facilities. 

About James S. Cogswell Award

The award was established in 1966 in honor of the late Air Force Col. James S. Cogswell, the first chief of industrial security within the Department of Defense (DoD). 

Cogswell was responsible for developing the basic principles of the Industrial Security Program which includes an emphasis on the partnership between industry and government to protect classified information.

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Oracle Cloud Launch Expands into San Jose Region; Clay Magouyrk Quoted
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Oracle Cloud Launch Expands into San Jose Region; Clay Magouyrk Quoted

Oracle announced on Wednesday that the company has expanded its reach into the San Jose Cloud Region, which marks the 25th region that Oracle Cloud has reached out of the 36 regions that the company hopes to reach by July 2021.

“We’re doubling-down on our global expansion and rapidly scaling our public cloud around the world to meet growing customer demand,” said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

“Enterprises need fully independent Cloud Regions in multiple sites and in-country, to meet data residency requirements and to safeguard disaster recovery measures.”

Oracle’s Cloud infrastructure expansion is the fastest by any major cloud provider. Oracle plans to establish at least two regions in almost every country where it operates. Their infrastructure is currently available in

  • Asia Pacific: Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Chuncheon, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Sydney, Melbourne
  • Americas: San Jose, Phoenix, Ashburn, Toronto, Montreal, São Paolo
  • Europe: Frankfurt, London, Zürich, Amsterdam
  • Middle East: Jeddah
  • Government: two general U.S. Government regions, three U.S. Department of Defense specific Government regions, one in the United Kingdom

About Oracle Cloud

Oracle’s second-generation cloud is built and optimized to help enterprises run their most demanding workloads securely. Oracle Cloud enables companies of any size to run their most mission-critical, high-volume, and high-performance databases and applications.

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Peraton Receives $188M in Contracts to Support Systems Development, Mission Capability Integration; Mike King Quoted
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Peraton Receives $188M in Contracts to Support Systems Development, Mission Capability Integration; Mike King Quoted

Peraton has been awarded new and expanded multiple contracts worth a combined $188 million to support U.S. government customers leading high-consequence national missions spanning multiple warfighting domains, the company announced on Wednesday. 

"By fusing our passion for national security with our depth of experience, Peraton regularly contributes to outcomes that meet and exceed our customers' current and future mission requirements," said Mike King, Peraton's chief growth officer. 

"We are honored to support a comprehensive array of nationally-critical efforts. Our work goes beyond providing technology and solutions; we are deeply committed to the success and long-term sustainability of our customers' missions."

Peraton emphasizes emergent warfighting domains in space, cyber, and intelligence by building mission capability solutions to deliver mission success, not just tools or infrastructure. 

About Peraton

As a trusted provider of highly differentiated space, intelligence, cyber, defense, homeland security, and communications capabilities, Peraton is a critical partner to the Intelligence Community, Department of Defense (DoD), and select federal agencies and commercial entities. Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, the company employs 3,500 people across the U.S. and Canada.

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Gen. David Goldfein on Air Force’s Joint All-Domain C2, Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent Programs
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Gen. David Goldfein on Air Force’s Joint All-Domain C2, Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent Programs

Gen. David Goldfein, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, told the National Defense magazine in an interview published Tuesday that he's pleased that industry partners believe that the service’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control program has "staying power."

"As part of my transition out, I did some out-calls with a number of CEOs … and one of the things they share with me is that they are doing the work now on finding ways to make JADC2 profitable for industry," Gen. Goldfein said. "That's a rather significant sea change, because what that means to me is they've come to the belief that this is not a short-term idea, but this idea has roots in the institution, the organization."

When asked about the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program, Gen. Goldfein said he wants the service to develop GBSD in a way that will allow the requirements to evolve with technology.

"I'd like it to get to a point where we're able to do a little bit of development ops, even in the nuclear business, so that as we achieve technological advances they can be brought into the GBSD without having us go through a two-year-long requirements review process. … We've got to become more agile than that," he said.

Gen. Goldfein also shared his insights on the nuclear enterprise, Next-Generation Air Dominance concept, B-21 bomber program, the creation of the U.S. Space Force and Gen. Charles "C.Q." Brown, the service branch’s next chief of staff. 

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CISA Reframing Cyber Hiring Approach; Christopher Krebs Quoted
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CISA Reframing Cyber Hiring Approach; Christopher Krebs Quoted

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is reassessing its cyber recruitment approach by prioritizing an applicant’s skills over professional experience, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

Christopher Krebs, director of CISA and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said the agency is focusing on younger applicants with hands-on cybersecurity experience, including college graduates and those undergoing post-graduate programs.

“I’m getting 17 [and] 18 year-olds that apply for jobs that have six years of practical, operational experience in security research because they’ve been online white-hat hackers since they could turn on a computer,” Krebs said. “What we’ve got to do is reconfigure the way that we think about hiring talent pool and maximize those approaches.”

Krebs noted that hiring managers should consider graduates from vocational and trade schools as part of efforts to overhaul the federal cyber hiring process.

This news comes almost two months following an executive order from President Trump to modify the federal government’s hiring practices so that a job applicants’ skills will be given priority over a college degree, ExecutiveGov reported on June 26th. 

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Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper: US Offers Options to Foreign Arms Clients Facing Economic Challenges
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Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper: US Offers Options to Foreign Arms Clients Facing Economic Challenges

Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, most recently director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) and a previous Wash100 Award winner, said the U.S. government is offering options to foreign allies to keep them from dropping planned arms procurements as they deal with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Defense News reported Tuesday.

Hooper told the publication during an interview options include changing payment schedules and allowing foreign nations to fund weapons systems procurement through U.S. bank loans.

“The bottom line here is, we are willing to work with our allies and partners, when they raise the challenges that they have, to find ways for them to continue to buy American and to ensure that they can pay for the equipment along a payment schedule that reflects their own economic conditions,” he added.

Hooper retired as head of DSCA on Monday, Aug. 3th, and was succeeded by Heidi Grant, former director of the Defense Technology Security Administration.

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New DARPA Program Aims to Safely, Easily Update Legacy Software
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New DARPA Program Aims to Safely, Easily Update Legacy Software

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched an effort to help developers safely update old software without the need to rewrite the code entirely.

DARPA said Thursday it will use novel concepts to allow for incremental updates in legacy software under the Verified Security and Performance Enhancement of Large Legacy Software or V-SPELLS program. The agency will leverage V-SPELLS to address the compatibility problem between legacy infrastructure and newer software components.

V-SPELLS aims to study the software components of large legacy codebases, develop tools that can safely and fully augment legacy software and create standard methods to address related technical issues. The effort will also explore concepts in domain-specific computer languages.

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DHS, DOT Pick University-Led Consortium for 911 Interoperability Test Framework
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DHS, DOT Pick University-Led Consortium for 911 Interoperability Test Framework

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Transportation (DoT) have tapped a consortium led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to build a set of processes for Next Generation 911 interoperability and compatibility tests.

The Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute will secure end-user feedback on testing standards and validate an approach that may define a formal procedure to assess interoperability, DHS said Monday.

The project aims to drive engagement with the Department of Defense, DHS, DOT, public safety agencies, industry and academia to determine test approach and requirements.

NG911 platforms are updated emergency response systems designed to allow text, voice and video communications through the use of internet protocol.

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