Mark Lewis, director of research and engineering for modernization at the Department of Defense (DoD), said DoD is shifting from the "trusted foundry" model toward a “zero trust” approach when it comes to procuring microelectronics due to risks of insider threats, DoD News reported Tuesday.

"You depend on data, you depend on validation and verification, you depend on standards that will make sure that what you have has no surprises, doesn't have back doors that are going to injure you or damage you, and doesn't act in a malicious way," Lewis said of the zero trust approach. "We're actually extremely comfortable now — we believe that the technologies already exist for us to be able to do that."

He said he believes the adoption of zero trust will help the department gain access to modern technology platforms and keep pace with strategic competitors. "Our goal is to allow the Department of Defense to purchase on the commercial curves, from state-of-the-art," he added.

In addition to microelectronics, Lewis also discussed the Pentagon's other 10 tech priorities, including 5G, cyber, autonomy, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and hypersonics.

The U.S. Navy has announced a new wave of small business innovation research funds for projects that tackle topics that the service branch has expressed interest in.

The service branch said Friday it opened the 20.2 Broad Agency Announcement pre-release on May 6 covering 55 Navy-specific topics.

Interested parties may begin submitting proposals until the pre-release period's completion. The new BAA follows the previous 20.4 announcement that will stop accepting applications on May 28.

“The goals of the program are to stimulate tech innovation, increase small business participation, foster participation by disadvantaged firms and increase private sector commercialization of technical research and development,” said Jennifer Stewart, technology transfer and SBIR manager at Naval Surface Warfare Center Corona in California.

The Inland Empire region within Southern California offers support to help small businesses submit proposals and pursue opportunities under the new BAA.

Rear Adm. Kathleen Creighton, cybersecurity division director at the Chief of Naval Operations Office, said the boosted amount of teleworking due to the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in cybersecurity risks, National Defense Magazine reported Monday.

She said at a Navy League virtual conference that the teleworking boost has created openings for adversaries to attack, and the service branch addresses this issue through the creation of new policies.

The new policies include approaches to renew expired access cards and a boost in the capacity of devices and networks that Navy personnel use for teleworking.

The service branch also sees the need to accelerate the implementation of Microsoft 365 and other information technology modernization efforts.

The U.S. Space Force is working to improve its space domain awareness capabilities and expand efforts to leverage data from ground and space-based assets, Federal News Network reported Monday.

Maj. Gen. Kimberly Crider, mobilization assistant to the Space Force’s chief of space operations, told the publication in an interview that the military branch seeks to collate “maximum amounts of data” into a multilevel cloud environment for various data analytics and space defense applications.

She said the Space Force also intends to collect data from sensors and commercial satellites to obtain information on elements such as debris, planets, spacecraft and other satellites. A commercial cloud environment will additionally support the service's efforts to develop a unified data library and data management environment, added Crider.

“At the same time, we also want to ensure the security of our assets, and therefore we want to be able to safeguard our data and our information as much as possible, while ensuring that we enable authorized access to our government and allied partners,” she noted.