Bryan Ware, assistant director at the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said CISA has strengthened cyber defense measures at federal health agencies and research facilities as nation-state actors continue their attempts to compromise coronavirus vaccine research efforts, CyberScoop reported Friday.

“I just want you to know that we have stepped up our protections of [the Department of Health and Human Services] and [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] — our federally-funded research organizations,” Ware said during a webinar Friday. “[We’ve] significantly accelerated that work.”

He cited CISA’s efforts to protect the U.S. health care sector from ransomware attacks and address hacking threats related to COVID-19 pandemic.

“We pivoted our organization the first quarter of this year to really helping the nation with this COVID response,” said Ware. “There’s nowhere that said that pandemic response was within our job, but we realized very quickly that our adversaries…whether they’re state actors or criminal actors, that they could present great risks to [the U.S.].”

The U.S. Navy has authorized Norfolk Naval Shipyard to operate its information technology platforms until March 2023.

NNSY maintained its usage of cyber IT lifecycle management approaches as well as an information assurance vulnerability program to achieve the authorization, the Navy said Thursday.

The certification will enable the shipyard to conduct continuous monitoring efforts for the Risk Management Framework, a system designed to assess the security posture of computing devices.

“Without the [authorization to operate], the [Shipyard Local Area Network] would be issued a denial to operate and no cyber IT services would be available on the shipyard," said Kevin Williams, cybersecurity division head at NNSY.

The USS Zumwalt destroyer has completed a firing test with the Mark 46 MOD 2 naval gun system with Navy Surface Warfare Center personnel.

The structural firing demonstration took place Saturday at the Naval Air Weapons Center Weapons Division Sea Test Range in Point Mugu, Calif., the U.S. Navy said Wednesday.

The remotely operated Mark 46 tracks targets via an infrared sensor, a laser rangefinder and a low-light camera, with firing done by a 30mm cannon.

Structural firing tests aim to verify the resistance of ship components against the pressure caused by the vessel's own weapons.

“Today's event is the first in a chapter of live fire test events over the next year that will prove the lethal capability that these ships will bring to the fight,” said Lt. Cmdr. Tim Kubisak, the Zumwalt test officer.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has fielded a chatbot that will work to check COVID-19 symptoms and address queries in various VA benefits.

VA said Tuesday the chatbot is accessible 24 hours a day and is designed to answer questions in stimulus payments, testing, rescheduling and telehealth options.

A team of developers employed Agile development methods and Microsoft's Healthcare Bot suite to complete the chatbot in three weeks. The increase in calls at VA contact centers pushed the department to build the program.

Denise Kitts, executive director at the Veterans Experience Office, said the chatbot may also utilize content created for other channels.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has partnered with the White House to bolster the country’s workforce in the science and technology areas of quantum information.

NSF said Monday it coordinated with the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy to host a virtual workshop on future education concepts for quantum information science.

The workshop, titled Key Concepts for Future Quantum Information Science Learners, took place March at Harvard University. The event produced a document that lists quantum entanglement, sensing and other concepts that form a framework for student engagement and education activities in the future. A total of nine concepts compose the document.

“We’re thrilled to begin this important work helping prepare the next generation of quantum learners,” said Jake Taylor, assistant director for quantum information science at OSTP.

Georgetown University, the University of Chicago and other partners supported the document’s development.

The U.S. Navy plans to consolidate its networks to establish a more manageable infrastructure as part of the $7.7 billion Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) recompete contract, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

Ben McNeal, program manager for Naval Enterprise Networks, told the publication that the Navy seeks to implement a “domain singularity” and integrate one-off networks into the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI). There are around 140 standalone networks including legacy capabilities under NMCI to date, according to the report.

McNeal said the Navy’s implementation of concepts such as zero-trust architectures enables the service to benefit from a “seamless flow” of data. He added that the Navy is working to modify its networks to support cloud services such as Microsoft’s Office 365.

“We’ve framed out a journey that’s going to take us from being cloud-intolerant — not able to consume cloud services at all — to being cloud-tolerant, cloud-ready and ultimately, cloud-native,” said Mcneal. “We’re still just in the cloud-tolerant stage right now.”

McNeal’s comments come as Leidos, the current NGEN-R contract awardee, faces two bid protests.