The FBI has sent a letter to Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., stating that the intelligence community (IC) is committed to sharing cyber threat information to its industry partners.

Jill Tyson, assistant director at the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs, wrote a letter to Lynch, who also served as chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, in response to the latter’s February letter calling for more stringent protection of U.S. data from foreign interference.

According to Tyson’s letter, the IC "ensures the timely production of unclassified reports” regarding U.S. cybersecurity and coordinates with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency(CISA) to help affected private entities.

Tyson noted that the FBI “routinely shares information” across all industry sectors and maintains direct liaison with companies to ensure that software security updates are released and security incidents are reported.

Industry partnerships are “a key component of the FBI's mission” and the agency works to ensure that its reports on the security of private technologies are relayed to interagency partners to generate actionable information, she said.

“Finally, the FBI encourages consumers to make themselves aware of potential risks and vulnerabilities that mobile applications and social media mechanisms can pose, including risks to exposing sensitive or personal information,” Tyson added.

Previously, Lynch sent separate letters to Apple and Google urging the companies to disclose their applications and technologies that were produced through foreign entities.

HSBC Holdings has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a long-term strategic cloud provider to drive digital transformation and deliver personalized banking services, AWS reported on Wednesday.

“Our work with AWS is an example of how HSBC continues to invest in secure and advanced technologies to make our digital banking experience even better for customers,” said Dinesh Keswani, CTO and CIO for Digital, HSBC. “ HSBC’s collaboration with AWS helps us to deliver innovative banking solutions to customers at a faster rate, starting with our Wealth & Personal Banking business.”

HSBC will integrate AWS technology across the bank’s lines of business, starting with customer-facing applications and application modernization in its Global Wealth and Personal Banking business. AWS will enable HSBC to drive innovation, automate key processes, and enhance operational efficiency across a range of personal financial services.

AWS’ global infrastructure will enable HSBC to run and scale applications around the world with greater availability and reliability. HSBC will draw upon AWS’s portfolio of cloud services, including compute, containers, storage, database, analytics, machine learning and security.

AWS’ cloud services will provide HSBC with digital products, support security and compliance standards for worldwide personal banking customers. HSBC plans to use AWS serverless and analytics services, such as Amazon Kinesis, to create a personalized and customer-centric banking experience.

“We look forward to our continued collaboration with HSBC as they leverage AWS’s proven capabilities, reliability, and security to drive efficiency across their business and become a more agile organization in the cloud,” said Frank Fallon, vice president of Financial Services at AWS.

About Amazon Web Services

For 14 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform.

AWS offers over 175 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 76 Availability Zones (AZs) within 24 geographic regions, with announced plans for nine more Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Japan, and Spain.

Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs.

Gil Alterovitz, director of artificial intelligence at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), said VA is testing an AI ‘to-go’ delivery model to help medical centers during the COVID-19 pandemic, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

Alterovitz said Tuesday during the ATARC IT Acquisition Virtual Summit that VA is working with academia and industry to develop AI modules that can be embedded and integrated across various systems. Such modules serve as plugins to existing software.

He noted that one of those AI modules was embedded in a department’s patient dashboard for use by veterans. That module helps VA’s health facilities predict an individual’s risk for the new coronavirus.

“Similarly, when you think about cutting-edge AI, many times it takes years for it to be developed and to lead to actual care — kind of like that meandering experience within a restaurant,” Alterovitz said. “And so we’re looking at: How do you cut that time? How do you allow for it to be developed in this kind of scalable, modular model?”

Will Roper, assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics at the U.S. Air Force and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said the service is expected to provide in the next few weeks new information on the “Digital Century Series” concept for aircraft procurement, National Defense reported Tuesday.

The concept seeks to speed up future aircraft development through the adoption of advanced software development processes, open systems architecture, digital engineering and other techniques.

“It’s a completely outside-the-box-idea in this century, but not too uncommon when the Air Force was first created [in the mid-20th century] that you could have continual competition for small lots of airplanes,” Roper told reporters Tuesday during a teleconference.

He said the Air Force is about three weeks out from coming up with a business case to prove the viability of the concept.

“We brought in some independent experts to help check our assumptions, check our map,” he said. “We’ve done the best job we can with our own data, comparing and contrasting.”

Roper also discussed the digital thread concept as a key element of the service’s Digital Century Series initiative.