The National Science Foundation (NSF) has entered into an agreement with the government of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas (U of A) to establish a cloud-based data analytics network to support academic research initiatives.

The five-year grant comes as part of NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) effort and earmarks $20 million to help develop the Arkansas Research Platform, the U of A said Monday. The grant adds to the U of A's $4 million in funding from the state for the Data Analytics That Are Robust and Trusted (DART) program which also includes eight other academic entities.

Participants will integrate their high-performance computing assets for the proposed research platform, which will be used to support artificial intelligence and machine learning studies. The platform is also intended to process massive amounts of data to address key program priorities under NSF and the U of A, the university noted.

"The DART project embodies the full spirit of convergence research NSF has been supporting during the past five years," said Dan Sui, vice chancellor for research and innovation at the U of A. “This project will have far-reaching impacts in Arkansas and beyond for generations to come."

The DART effort is slated to take place from July 1 through June 2025.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) now offers an analytics platform through which COVID-19 researchers may analyze data for treatment studies and development. NIH said Monday that it launched this platform to support the National COVID Cohort Collaborative or N3C effort that aims to provide insight on health risks and other factors that may help scientists come up with treatments.

The analytics platform will work to consolidate and convert Coronavirus-related information into a format available to health care providers and researchers. The health research agency's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences provided funds for NC3.

“This platform was deployed to stand up this important COVID-19 effort in a matter of weeks, and we anticipate that it will serve as the foundation for addressing future public health emergencies," said Christopher Austin, director of NCATS.

NIH also made the platform to accommodate machine learning-powered analyses.

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., has presented two bills to bolster U.S. cybersecurity through economic planning, technical support and state-level response. The Continuity of Economy Act of 2020 would task the president to work with certain federal agencies on the formation of a strategy to guide economic protection during a serious cyber attack, Peters' office said Friday.

The bill would also call for a response and recovery framework for use in the case of such a crisis, and identify industry and government entities that are significant to maintaining U.S. economic activity. Peters built the bill on recommendations issued by the Cyber Solarium Commission.

The second bill, known as the National Guard Cyber Interoperability Act, would grant the National Guard authority and resources to support cybersecurity operations during crises. This bill would allow the secretaries of the U.S. Air Force (USAF), the U.S. Army and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to launch cybersecurity pilot programs that involve National Guard forces.

“Cyber-attacks are one of the greatest threats to our national security and the United States is not sufficiently prepared to defend itself in cyberspace or recover from a significant cyber disruption,” Peters said. "These bills will help prepare our country to defend against and recover from serious attacks on our critical infrastructure – including our financial institutions, transportation infrastructure and health care facilities – that could cause severe disruption to our daily lives," he added.

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has detected a surge of cyber threats following its implementation of telework across the service branch, C4ISRnet reported Monday.

Lt. Gen. Mary O’Brien, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations at the Air Force, told attendees at a Joint Service Academy Cybersecurity Conference event that the service expanded its virtual private network (VPN) connections from 9,000 to 400,000 since the pandemic’s onset.

She said the 16th Air Force’s 616th Operations Center worked to “monitor those threats, conduct assessments [and] minimize the risk” to Air Force networks in an effort to reduce network vulnerabilities. The U.S. Army is also working to expand its VPN capabilities to cover internet access points, teleconferencing platforms and more mobile devices, according to C4ISRnet.

Officials from the Department of Defense (DoD) and U.S. Navy have also said that tools for remote collaboration enabled users to securely implement telework operations, the publication noted. According to a spokesperson for the U.S. Cyber Command, the combination of VPNs and tools such as Microsoft’s teaming applications helped mitigate reliance on unauthorized products for telework.

Avaya has partnered with guard.me International Insurance, an award-winning provider of international student health insurance, to help enhance its contact center capabilities and mobilize its remote workforce, Avaya reported on Tuesday.

“With its new contact center and workforce optimization solutions, guard.me has been able to digitally transform their employee and student experiences through multiple communication channels. We look forward to continuing with guard.me on its digital transformation and to help provide exceptional outcomes for their customers,” said Frank Ciccone, senior vice president, North America Sales, Avaya.

The partnership will help increase employee retention and higher satisfaction for the students that depend on this trusted provider for health services. Avaya will help guard.me modernize their communication solutions by providing the flexibility needed to support growth expectations and the evolving needs of their customers. 

In recognizing the urgent need to maintain business continuity and keep its workforce safe through the current global crisis, the company also wanted to effectively implement remote-work solutions for employees. 

Avaya Contact Center and Avaya Subscription solutions has provided guard.me with advanced communications to serve its students through call, email, chat, SMS and self-service functionalities. guard.me agents have also gained access to Avaya Contact Center co-browse features, enabling them to work with a customer on their shared screen during a call to facilitate better and more satisfying engagements.

“We strive to deliver the personalized attention and culturally-sensitive solutions students need, while offering forward-thinking tools that make administration easier for school staff,” said Keith Segal, President and CEO, guard.me International Insurance. “To provide the best services for our customers, we needed a contact center solution to enable a modern workforce that streamlined our operations and also featured the scalability requirements for our future growth plans.”

About Avaya

Businesses are built on the experiences they provide, and everyday millions of those experiences are built by Avaya (NYSE: AVYA). For over one hundred years, we’ve enabled organizations around the globe to win – by creating intelligent communications experiences for customers and employees. Avaya builds open, converged and innovative solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration – in the cloud, on-premise or a hybrid of both. To grow your business, we’re committed to innovation, partnership, and a relentless focus on what’s next. We’re the technology company you trust to help you deliver Experiences that Matter.

BlackBerry Limited has partnered with Bell to provide enhanced secure communications to business and government customers and strengthen BlackBerry’s relationship to deliver leading-edge mobile security solutions to Canadian consumers and business customers, the company announced on Tuesday.

"We could not be more delighted to partner with Bell, BlackBerry's preferred telecom partner for BlackBerry Protect in Canada and one of the country's most innovative companies," said John Chen, executive chairman and CEO of BlackBerry. "Together, we will bring the next level of excellence in endpoint security to Canadian enterprise customers across the country."

BlackBerry has become Bell's preferred Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) partner, which will enable Bell to offer its enterprise customers access to BlackBerry Protect, the MTD solution that uses the power of artificial intelligence to block malware infections, prevent URL phishing attacks and provide application integrity checking.

"As organizations of all kinds enable remote work solutions for their teams during COVID-19, it is more important than ever to remain vigilant about security, including network and mobile device management," said Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of BCE and Bell Canada. "Bell is proud to be working with mobile security leader BlackBerry to expand the scale of our solutions for the country's largest organizations."

In May 2020, BlackBerry also partnered with 12 new channel partners to expand the company’s opportunities for its Radar offering and the company’s intelligent, data-driven asset monitoring devices, BlackBerry will improve business automate operations and improve utilization of trailers, containers and chassis.

Of the partners, AttriX, A provider of telematic solutions for the transportation industry, will join BlackBerry. AttriX has integrated its offerings to provide fleet owners visibility to all the company’s assets. With its partnership with BlackBerry Radar, AttriX customers can manage their trucks, driver performance and now their trailers within this partnered all-in-one fleet and asset management solution.

BlackBerry Radar will serve as an asset monitoring solution that provides information, including location, motion, mileage, temperature, humidity, door open/close status, and cargo status on an intuitive on-line dashboard.

The solution will collect data than conventional GPS-based track and trace solutions and uses this information to build a 360-degree visualization of a customer’s assets. All data will be transmitted and stored securely on a cloud platform, which will maintain the privacy of user information at all times.

About BlackBerry

BlackBerry (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) provides intelligent security software and services to enterprises and governments around the world. The company secures more than 500M endpoints including 150M cars on the road today.  Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company leverages AI and machine learning to deliver innovative solutions in the areas of cybersecurity, safety and data privacy solutions, and is a leader in the areas of endpoint security management, encryption, and embedded systems.  BlackBerry's vision is clear – to secure a connected future you can trust.

Deloitte has launched a suite of cloud-based solutions to help leaders establish and deploy the strategy and capabilities to address the challenges facing their communities and combat the spread of COVID-19, while overseeing the recovery of public services and economic activity, the company reported on Tuesday.

“GovConnect allows officials to see a simplified view of their complex health ecosystem and deploy resources and capabilities accordingly to manage the public health crisis, help ensure the safety of public servants and enable communication with residents,” said Sanjay Shah, principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP’s government and public services practice.

Deloitte’s GovConnect platform will enable organizations and governments to accelerate a path forward through thought leadership that will assist responsible re-entry to the workplace. The platform will include customer relationship management (CRM) and mobile capabilities to support the revitalization and modernization of public health platforms.

CRM case management will enable state and local governments, and public health organizations to collect information on contact tracing and conduct follow-up as well as allow users to self-report positive disease conditions and receive guidance. The system can be integrated with existing CRM, benefitting management and public health case management systems.

Deloitte has activated contact tracing capabilities so individuals can participate on an opt-in basis to create a network of information to trace contacts for employees, visitors and contractors. Call center operations will provide support for establishment, configuration and operations of a customer support center.

GovConnect will provide testing process optimization application, enabling state and local governments and public health organizations to identify potential improvements to end-to-end testing processes, test data integration and reporting, and assess technology system implications.

Advanced analytics solutions pair contact tracing and case management data with external data sources to provide deeper insights into where COVID-19 is spreading, where vulnerable populations are located, how to manage PPE inventory and how to deploy health resources to drive greater impact.

The mission support feature will provide strategic and operational services to state and local public health agencies by augmenting core services, leveraging existing competencies, and identifying and building partnerships.

“Managing the disease is not only key to saving lives, it is key to restoring customer and business confidence that will drive economic recovery,” said Lindsay Hough, principal in Deloitte Consulting LLP’s government and public services practice. “The platform provides critical tools and accelerators in this fight and builds a more agile, resilient public health platform to support the long-term health of our communities.”

About Deloitte

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as “Deloitte Global”) does not provide services to clients.

In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the “Deloitte” name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.

Parsons Corporation has released Grid Armor, a predictive resiliency solution that helps utility companies improve operational efficiency and better respond to and prevent potential catastrophic events, such as wildfires and major power outages, the company reported on Tuesday. 

"Electric utilities are facing changing regulations, intensifying weather patterns, aging infrastructure and mounting costs for grid maintenance and repair," said Jon Moretta, executive vice president, industrial market for Parsons.

Parsons’ Grid Armor will utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to collect real-time data from weather, conductors, video and vegetation to provide simple, meaningful and actionable information that will help utilities better maintain the grid.

Grid Armor will gather data from Parsons' PeARL 3D aerial imaging system, real-time overhead power line health monitoring, as well as video, weather and sensor inputs. The proprietary software will then scrub the data to provide predictive analytics through a dashboard.

The predictive dashboard will enable utilities to visualize the data and act where needed to mitigate damage from earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and other storms that can lead to outages and even wildfires. 

The platform will collect data from legacy and emerging sensors to craft visuals and will include advanced sensing such as detailed 3D point cloud data, vegetation height, and density, conductor geometry, and motion, power flow and weather.

Grid Armor will also leverage existing data including KML/KMZ input, real-time weather, geospatial weather layers, EO/IR from local cameras, LIDAR data from local sensors and drone video and imagery to combine traditional computation with genetic and predictive algorithms, and tie in third-party algorithms where needed. The Web-based UI will allow collaborative and disparate workflows as well as advanced searching and data tagging.

"At Parsons, we are dedicated to delivering a better world through innovative technology. Grid Armor, gives utilities the information they need to efficiently and effectively improve grid resilience and keep the power on for their customers," added Moretta. 

About Parsons

Parsons (NYSE: PSN) is a leading disruptive technology provider in the global defense, intelligence, and critical infrastructure markets, with capabilities across cybersecurity, missile defense, space, connected infrastructure, and smart cities. Please visit parsons.com, and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook to learn how we're making an impact.