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Leidos Wins Contract to Help Disinfect Edinburgh Airport Security Tray Return Systems; Maria Hedden Quoted
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Leidos Wins Contract to Help Disinfect Edinburgh Airport Security Tray Return Systems; Maria Hedden Quoted

Leidos has been awarded a prime contract by Edinburgh Airport Limited to upgrade the airport's security tray return systems with antimicrobial tray technology. The company reported on Tuesday.

"Edinburgh Airport's leadership recognizes the increased risk of the virus spreading from the number of travelers and staff handling security trays every day, and I commend them for implementing antimicrobial security tray technology," said Maria Hedden, senior vice president and operation manager for Leidos' Security Detection and Automation Operation. 

Leidos will implement antimicrobial technology at Edinburgh Airport to minimize the spread of bacteria in the airport and mitigate the spread of bacteria from person-to-surface contact. Leidos will provide new antimicrobial security trays that prevent reproduction of a broad spectrum of bacteria. 

The company’s efforts will help prevent staphylococcus aureus (staph), E. coli, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA and VRE, by 99.99 percent. The antimicrobial technology is built into the security tray during Leidos' tray manufacturing process and continuously minimizes the presence of microbes throughout the security tray's lifecycle.  

Edinburgh Airport has remained operational during the coronavirus pandemic. The airport’s officials have continued to enact plans to safeguard the health of its staff and the traveling public while preparing for global travel recovery. 

The antimicrobial security trays will be cleaned according to normal hygiene procedures, but the additive will not wash off or wear away. The use of antimicrobial technology will help kill microbes that can survive on surfaces for up to eight weeks.

Working with Leidos since 2012, Edinburgh Airport utilizes the company's intelligent automated tray return systems as well as desktop real-time explosives detection systems. "Leidos is proud to support the place where Scotland meets the world with security detection and automation technology solutions that are fast, frictionless and fully integrated," Hedden.

About Leidos

Leidos is a Fortune 500 information technology, engineering, and science solutions and services leader working to solve the world's toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, civil, and health markets. The company's 37,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Va., Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $11.09 billion for the fiscal year ended January 3, 2020.

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Quantum Reports Q4, FY 2020 Results; Jamie Lerner Quoted
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Quantum Reports Q4, FY 2020 Results; Jamie Lerner Quoted

Quantum Corporation has announced financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter and year ended March 31, 2020, noting revenue of $402.9 million, increased gross margins by 42.8 percent, decrease of total operating expenses by 12 percent and narrowed GAAP Net loss to $5.2 million, the company reported on Thursday. 

"Quantum delivered significantly improved performance in fiscal 2020, particularly in terms of profitability, despite a marked slowdown in revenue in mid-March when the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic halted professional sporting events and many of our customers in the media and entertainment sectors temporarily ceased filming operations," commented Jamie Lerner, chairman and CEO, Quantum. 

Quantum’s adjusted Net Income increased by $10.6 million to $15.4 million and its adjusted EBITDA increased by $13.3 million to $45.9 million. Revenue was driven by a 3 percent increase in product revenue with growth in primary storage and devices and media partially offset by a decline in secondary storage systems. 

Strength in products was offset by modest declines in services primarily due to reduced support renewals from our legacy backup customers, and royalty driven by overall declines in market unit volumes as the primary use of tape transitions from backup to archive implementations.

Quantum’s gross profit for fiscal 2020 was $172.5 million, or 42.8 percent gross margin, compared to $167.6 million, or 41.6 percent gross margin, in fiscal 2019. Gross margins improved year over year across a wide range of products, primarily due to reductions in cost of service and a sales mix weighted towards more profitable product lines.

The company’s total operating expenses for fiscal 2020 were $151.3 million, or 37.5 percent of revenue, compared to $172.4 million, or 42.8 percent of revenue, in fiscal 2019. Research and development expenses increased 13 percent to $36.3 million for fiscal 2020 compared to $32.1 million in fiscal 2019. 

Selling, general and administrative expenses declined 15 percent to $114.0 million for fiscal 2020 compared to $134.7 million for fiscal 2019 due to lower costs associated with the financial restatement and related activities, as well as lower operating expenses overall as a result of our efforts to streamline processes and reduce our facilities footprint. 

Net loss was $5.2 million compared to a net loss of $42.8 million. Excluding non-recurring charges, stock compensation and restructuring charges, adjusted Net Income was $15.4 million, or $0.34 per diluted share for fiscal 2020, compared to $4.8 million, or $0.12 per diluted share, in fiscal 2019.

“The acquisition of the ActiveScale object storage business from Western Digital and the integration of Atavium software into our organization, has strategically bolstered our technology portfolio to strengthen our capabilities in each of these markets. As a result, our position in the industry continues to improve," Lerner added. 

Quantum completed its acquisition of the ActiveScale object storage business from Western Digital Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., to expand  Quantum's leadership role in storing and managing video, in March 2020.

Quantum will acquire the ActiveScale product line, adding object storage software and erasure coding technology to the company’s portfolio. With the addition, Quantum will expand its product offerings in the object storage market. Object storage has emerged as a response to the exponential growth of video and other forms of unstructured data. 

The emerging content has required high-speed capture and processing, then retained for years or decades, including entertainment video and images, surveillance and security, and marketing and training. Prior to this acquisition Quantum successfully delivered and supported the ActiveScale object storage product line for over five years.  

About Quantum

Quantum technology and services help customers capture, create and share digital content – and preserve and protect it for decades.  With solutions built for every stage of the data lifecycle, Quantum's platforms provide the fastest performance for high-resolution video, images, and industrial IoT. That's why the world's leading entertainment companies, sports franchises, researchers, government agencies, enterprises, and cloud providers are making the world happier, safer, and smarter on Quantum.

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Salesforce Launches Salesforce Anywhere to Support the Future of Digital Workforce; Bret Taylor Quoted
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Salesforce Launches Salesforce Anywhere to Support the Future of Digital Workforce; Bret Taylor Quoted

Salesforce has launched ‘Salesforce Anywhere’ to provide enhanced technologies and platform services to help organizations retrieve greater levels of productivity and customer success during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the company announced on Thursday.

“The COVID-19 crisis has taught us that companies must be able to sell, service, market and collaborate from anywhere, and that won’t change in a post-pandemic world,” said Bret Taylor, president and COO Salesforce.

Salesforce reported that nearly 70 percent of people believe the pandemic will permanently change the nature of work and more than 50 percent say that flexible work locations are very important to them. The company’s solution will enable an all-digital, work-from-anywhere business model.

Salesforce Anywhere will enable organizations to sell, service and market from anywhere. The platform will be powered by Salesforce Customer 360 and include new industry-specific technology. The platform will also promote collaboration from anywhere by embedding chat, alerts, comments and video directly into the Salesforce service offerings.

The company will enable the workforce to work from any location by integrating an employee service solution and new employee data model that will allow organizations to build, manage and scale employee apps and services quickly and securely.

Salesforce has also integrated MuleSoft and Einstein Recommendations to provide data and build employees’ skill set. With the addition, users will be able to understand data and unlock insights to make better decisions as well as drive their company’s digital transformation.

Users can subscribe to real-time alerts for any changes and updates made within Salesforce. Customers may also gain access to instant message or video, while looking at the same page together within Salesforce.

Salesforce will offer a new native real-time chat and video experience powered by Amazon Chime. Zoom will also be offered as an out-of-the-box integration so that organizations can leverage their video conference of choice. Teammates will be able to work on the same Salesforce page and follow teammates to other parts of Salesforce, so teams can work side-by-side.

“With Salesforce Anywhere we’re empowering customers of every size, location and industry to digitally transform with confidence in this all-digital, work-from-anywhere world,” added Taylor.

About Salesforce

Salesforce is the global leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), bringing companies closer to their customers in the digital age. Founded in 1999, Salesforce enables companies of every size and industry to take advantage of powerful technologies—cloud, mobile, social, internet of things, artificial intelligence, voice and blockchain—to create a 360-degree view of their customers.

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CVP Secures CAMD Contract to Support EPA Emission Data; Anirudh Kulkarni Quoted
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CVP Secures CAMD Contract to Support EPA Emission Data; Anirudh Kulkarni Quoted

CVP has been awarded the three-year, Clean Air Markets Division (CAMD) application portfolio modernization program contract for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to capture and report on emissions data for the EPA, industry, state and public, the company reported on Thursday.

“Through this contract, we will support the modernization of the CAMD business suite used to monitor emissions from electrical utilities, conduct inspections, and provide public reporting,” said Anirudh Kulkarni, founder and CEO of CVP.

Under the CAMD, CVP will work for a variety of programs, including the Clean Air Allowance Trading Programs, Acid Rain Program (ARP) and Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). CVP will work to reduce stationary source pollutant emissions that can have harmful effects on human health and the environment.

CVP will provide advanced technology services to support the design, development and maintenance of the updated suite of CAMD program applications to investigate functions that support emission reporting and provide access to emission and allowance data.

The services will include consulting, architecture planning, user research, design, UI/UX, code development and maintenance, testing, documentation, end-user support, and Agile/Scrum coaching.

“CVP’s 450+ professionals wake up everyday looking for ways to make a difference to our nation’s health, security, and safety. We are proud to play such an important role in the overall EPA mission,” added Kulkarni.

About CVP

CVP is a business and technology consulting company that helps organizations navigate disruption with innovative strategies and solutions and prepare for a culture of Continuous Change. It supports clients in the healthcare, national security, and public sectors, as well as private business, by enabling them to innovate faster and make decisions quicker.

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Tonya Ugoretz: FBI Sees Significant Rise in Cyber Threats Related to COVID-19
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Tonya Ugoretz: FBI Sees Significant Rise in Cyber Threats Related to COVID-19

Tonya Ugoretz, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, said at least 20,000 reports of malicious emails, scams and other cyber threats related to the COVID-19 pandemic have been lodged this year with the bureau’s internet crime complaint center, The Hill reported Wednesday.

“Already, here we are in the first or second week of June, the IC3 has already had as many complaints up to this point as they did for all of 2019, and that is for all types of internet fraud,” Ugoretz said Wednesday at a CrowdStrike-hosted virtual conference.

She noted that nation-state actors continue to target U.S. health care institutions performing research into treatments and vaccines against the disease.

“We have also seen other actors, including nation states, scanning for vulnerabilities, conducting reconnaissance, conducting intrusions, and attempting to steal data from those US universities and research institutions that are really focused on trying to deliver that research in response to the pandemic,” Ugoretz said. 

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Karen St. Germain on NASA’s Earth Science Decadal Survey Implementation
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Karen St. Germain on NASA’s Earth Science Decadal Survey Implementation

Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science division, said her top priority will be finding ways to implement the Earth science decadal survey, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.

“The decadal survey is a pretty ambitious plan that also calls on us to deliver on the program of record from the prior decadal,” St. Germain said Tuesday at an online meeting of NASA’s Earth Science Technology Forum. “We’ve got a fairly encumbered Earth science budget for the next several years, so one challenge will be starting up the new decadal missions within the resources that we have.”

She explained that technology improvements, rising commercial Earth observation capabilities and increasing demand for actionable information to study environmental conditions like climate change are some of the factors that pose challenges in executing the recommendations from the decadal survey.

St. Germain, who joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in early June 2020, said she would use her experience at NOAA to help improve collaboration with NASA in the field of Earth observation.

NASA’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 requested $1.77 billion for the Earth science division, which secured $1.97 billion in FY 2020 appropriations.

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FedRAMP Unveils Agency Liaison Program
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FedRAMP Unveils Agency Liaison Program

The program management office (PMO) for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) has launched an initiative that seeks to train liaisons in sharing resources and knowledge about the cloud certification process.

FedRAMP said Wednesday that the PMO will implement a “train-the-trainer” model for liaisons at more than 30 participating agencies as part of the Agency Liaison Program to help facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration across the government.

The new initiative seeks to help industry and agencies advance cloud adoption efforts and sets up a formal feedback mechanism for process improvement. It was created in response to client feedback the PMO received from the ACT-IAC FedRAMP working group and the FedRAMP Ideation Challenge.

The FedRAMP PMO said it has had a kick-off meeting and initial training session with agency liaisons and will hold additional training sessions in July 2020.

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DCSA Releases Insider Threat Resource App
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DCSA Releases Insider Threat Resource App

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) has launched a mobile application that will work to provide users with training and educational resources on insider threats.

The Insider Threat Sentry app allows users to view graphic novels, videos, preparedness guides and infographics that discuss various insider threats from workplace violence to active shooting scenarios, DCSA said Monday. The app also features online courses, webinars, news, real-world applications of counter-insider threat education as well as multiple seasons of the Vigilance video series.

“InT Sentry allows security professionals, insider threat practitioners, and anyone with an interest in national security to easily access high-quality resources,” Rebecca Morgan, chief of the Center for Development of Security Excellence’s insider threat division, said in a report.

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Marine Corps’ 1st Network Battalion Begins Operations
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Marine Corps’ 1st Network Battalion Begins Operations

The U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) has activated its 1st Network Battalion that will serve as part of the service branch’s proposed three-battalion command-and-control (C2) segment.

The Marine Corps said Tuesday that Lt. Col. Juliet Calvin will serve as commander of the new battalion and will oversee missions aimed at ensuring the resiliency of the Department of Defense Information Network (DoDIN) as well as USMC infrastructure.

1st Network Battalion’s activation is meant to support the Marine Corps Enterprise Network (MCEN) C2 modernization program, which seeks to establish a “communications backbone” that integrates personnel, computers and devices in the USMC network ecosystem.

USMC said it envisions an overarching C2 architecture that combines the capabilities of the U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command (MARFORCYBER) and Marine Corps Cyberspace Operations Group (MCCOG) through three network battalions.

USMC is slated to establish two network activities in late 2020 as well as additional network battalions under MCCOG in 2021.

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U.S. Navy Continues Tech Maturation Efforts for Large Unmanned Surface Vessel Program
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U.S. Navy Continues Tech Maturation Efforts for Large Unmanned Surface Vessel Program

The U.S. Navy plans to procure its first Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV) in fiscal 2023 despite the House’s imposition of funding limits until the service proves the reliability of LUSV subsystems, USNI News reported Monday.

The House Armed Services Committee released segments of its version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which mandates the Navy to ensure the maturity of LUSV components, command-and-control systems and autonomous functionalities.

Rear Adm. Casey Moton, program executive officer for unmanned and small combatants at the Navy, said at a recent virtual event that the service has begun developing prototypes for LUSV parts such as vertical launching system cells in an effort to increase technical maturity.

He noted that partnerships with allies such as NATO has helped the Navy drive research into unmanned surface and undersea vessels for operations such as anti-submarine warfare and mine countermeasures.

“We’ve also got a group that’s stood up between us that’s looking at platform integration type aspects, so I think there’s a really huge opportunity there to leverage off of each others’ work and to make sure that our systems are able to operate together," said Moton.

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