The General Services Administration has announced the transition of a federal system that allows users to view, verify and modify procurement activities. Reporting functions of the Federal Procurement Data System or FPDS.gov will move to the beta SAM.gov Data Bank by fiscal year 2020's conclusion, GSA said Thursday.

Those who use FPDS for ad hoc reporting are advised to review the attributes of saved reports. This information will serve as a reference if files would require recreation in beta.SAM.gov's upcoming ad hoc tool.

The government will only accommodate conversions for reports created on or before Jan. 31. FPDS.gov will still maintain its current functions following the transition. SAM.gov's beta will feature contract reports in the website's "Data Bank" section.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is calling on agencies to review the National Security Agency’s guidance on mitigating cloud vulnerabilities to help inform future procurement decisions.

CISA said Friday that the NSA guide covers measures that organizations must take to prevent vulnerabilities such as misconfigurations, shared tenancy risks, poor access control and supply chain risks. Topics also covered in the information sheet include cloud encryption and key management, shared cloud responsibilities and cloud threat actors.

“Clouds can provide a number of security advantages over traditional, onpremises technology, such as the ability to thoroughly automate security-relevant processes, including threat and incident response,” according to the guide. “Security in the cloud is a constant process and customers should continually monitor their cloud resources and work to improve their security posture.” 

CISA’s announcement builds on the agency’s analysis reports on Microsoft Office 365 technologies and advanced persistent threats targeting information technology service providers.

The U.S. Army and Duke University have partnered to address cyber risks that threaten the use of object and facial recognition in artificial intelligence training. Researchers at the university have developed a software that detects backdoor hacking attempts orchestrated against recognition systems, the Army said Tuesday. Army Research Laboratory awarded a nine-month, $60K grant for the effort.

“This work will lay the foundations for recognizing and mitigating backdoor attacks in which the data used to train the object recognition system is subtly altered to give incorrect answers,” said MaryAnne Fields, program manager for intelligent systems at the Army Research Office.

Certain visual characteristics captured by recognition sensors may corrupt data and cause incorrect labels in machine learning platforms.

This case of data corruption would lead systems to generate false predictions. For example, the system would sense a common characteristic and associate that information with only a single, specific person. Hackers may intentionally feed certain characteristics or attributes into learning systems to trigger attacks.

“Our software scans all the classes and flags those that show strong responses, indicating the high possibility that these classes have been hacked,” said Helen Li, who leads the effort with fellow faculty member Yiran Chen.

Afterward, the software locates the region that contains a visual characteristic serving as the backdoor attack’s trigger. Qiao said learning models should then undergo retraining to disregard attributes that have triggered backdoors.

Janice deGarmo, acting chief data officer at the State Department, has been appointed as head of a newly established center that seeks to help U.S. diplomats leverage data to make policy and management decisions, FedScoop reported Friday.

The department launched its first Center for Analytics to provide tools, systems and training that can support the country's foreign policy priorities and diplomatic engagements.

DeGarmo concurrently serves as deputy director in the Office of Management Strategy and Solutions, where she leads a team focused on developing guidelines and recommendations to address  enterprise-wide management challenges.

She joined the department in 2009 as a senior adviser and previously worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics as an analyst.

Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That expressing concerns about the privacy risks posed by the company’s facial recognition tool.

In the letter, Markey wrote that Clearview’s tool allows users to capture and upload pictures of strangers and analyze the biometric data of photographed individuals. He noted that the technology could be used by foreign adversaries to collect data about a particular individual for blackmailing.

“Any technology with the ability to collect and analyze individuals’ biometric information has alarming potential to impinge on the public’s civil liberties and privacy,” the lawmaker wrote.

He also expressed concerns about reports that the company offers its product to law enforcement agencies across the country.

Markey asked Clearview to respond to 14 questions by Feb. 12. The senator asked the company to submit a list of law enforcement and intelligence agencies that currently use the tool or have been approached by Clearview; provide the results of bias assessments the company has performed on its product; and describe the cybersecurity practices of the company to protect the data.