Growth Catalyst Partners (GCP) has partnered with Hanley Wood, former GCP CEO and Peter Goldstone, a B2B information and data veteran, to acquire a controlling stake in Government Executive Media Group (GEMG), the company announced on Monday. 

Since 1997, GEMG has been owned by Atlantic Media’s chairman and owner David Bradley. He will continue as a board member and prominent investor for GEMG, but Goldstone will serve as the chairman of the board after the acquisition is completed. 

“Partnering with GCP and the GEMG team presents an ideal opportunity for me to leverage a career of experience into a very exciting market partnership. This enables us to bring together capital, complementary skill sets and an extraordinary team in a market that is perfect for our investment strategy,” Goldstone commented. 

In addition, Tom Shoop will continue to serve GEMG as its Editor-in-Chief, Connie Sayers will remain its president and Tim Hartman will stay on as the company’s CEO. 

“This new partnership is going to fuel our growth and enable us to make investments in new products and strategic acquisitions, and author new groundbreaking industry partnerships, all as a fast-moving, independent company,” said Hartman. 

GEMG’s four leading digital brands actively engage with more than two million federal, state, and local government executives, as well as over 200 of the largest private-sector vendor partners via editorial content, digital insights and intelligence, live and virtual events, marketing services, and proprietary research. 

“GEMG has all of the qualities we look for in companies including a strong management team, a proven portfolio of leading products and services and an excellent reputation in their sector, said Scott Peters, co-founder of GCP. 

“We are excited to partner with Peter Goldstone, Tim Hartman and the team to strengthen their footprint and market share in the public sector and build-out more services through organic growth and acquisitions,” Peters added. 

About Government Executive Media Group

Government Executive Media Group (GEMG) is dedicated to providing federal, state, and local government leaders with trusted and useful insights and best practices to help them advance their organizations’ missions. Through its market-leading Government Executive, Nextgov, Defense One, and Route Fifty brands, GEMG reaches over two million government influencers nationwide across digital content, events and offerings.

Granite Telecommunications has released a rapid-response Remote Redundancy solution to support the nation’s businesses and government agencies, quickly enabling “work from home” functionality for employees in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the company announced on Wednesday.

“Granite’s new Remote Redundancy solution is designed to quickly empower remote workers and provide business continuity,” said Christopher Chapin, Chief Technology Officer for Granite. “This includes rapid overnight shipping, easy self-installation and low monthly pricing to help companies protect their employees as well as their bottom lines.”

The company’s packages will deliver options for redundant connections, network security, communications and collaboration tools that will be customizable for each employee, depending on existing access to the Internet, calling applications and job function.

Remote Redundancy will also include fully managed network services for employees working from home, such as wireless redundancy, essential redundancy and executive redundancy. Wireless redundancy will deliver a wireless connection utilizing one of the four major wireless providers with a term as short as four months.

Essential redundancy will feature wireless redundancy plus a dynamic 25/5Mbps broadband circuit and executive redundancy will include 1Gbps wireless redundancy plus 100/10Mbps broadband circuit, one Granite Cloud PBX Soft Seat with mobile and desktop app and Granite Guardian network monitoring.

Granite will also offer optional package upgrades, including wireline access upgrade from 25/5Mbps up to 100/10Mbps, wireless access upgrade from 250Mbps to 1Gbps, on-premises managed firewall and same-day soft seat with one call path.

The company will also extend Same-day soft “Meeting Light” (4-person conference bridge) VoIP handset and additional call path One-hour on-site setup Granite Guardian network monitoring (with wireline connections only).

About Granite Telecommunications

Granite delivers one-stop communications solutions to multilocation businesses and government agencies throughout the United States and Canada. The $1.6 billion company serves more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100 companies in the United States, and has 1.75 million voice and data lines under management. Granite launched in 2002 and grew quickly by helping businesses to simplify sourcing and management of local and long distance phone services with one point of contact and one invoice for all their office locations nationwide.

Today, Granite is the leader in aggregating Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS), and has extended its unique value proposition – “one company, one contact, one bill” – to include a range of advance business communications services, including Internet access, SD-WAN, wireless WAN, hosted PBX, SIP trunking, mobile voice and data, mobile device management, managed security, network integration and much more. Granite employs more than 2,300 people at its headquarters in Quincy, Mass., and nine regional offices nationwide.

Sehlke Consulting has been named to the annual Vet100 list, recognizing the company’s exponential growth as a veteran-owned business, the company announced on Wednesday. 

“We founded Sehlke Consulting to provide the government with Precision Inspired Performance. We are extremely proud of our team, achieving the Vet 100 List for two consecutive years. Their ability to deliver transformative solutions to our clients is truly impressive! We look forward to another great year and continued growth.” stated Chad Sehlke, Founder and CEO.

Originally established as the Vet50 list, this year’s list expanded to include 100 veteran-owned businesses in acknowledgement of the growing culture and success of veteran entrepreneurs. Sehlke has noted that business growth has continued to grow, which has been attributed to veteran entrepreneurs. 

Veteran businesses contribute more than 5.5 million employees to the business market. Military experience has enabled veteran entrepreneurs with skills and knowledge that has been extremely valuable in the business world. 

“The growth of this year’s list is a hopeful and inspiring indication of how important and valuable veteran entrepreneurs are to our society and economy. These businessmen and women not only served in defense of our collective freedom and security…We are proud to partner again with Inc. magazine and are grateful for their efforts to shine a spotlight on the success of veteran-owned businesses,” said Mike Haynie, Syracuse University Vice Chancellor and IVMF Founder and Executive Director. 

About Sehlke

Founded in 2011, Sehlke Consulting is a rapidly-growing Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) headquartered in Arlington, VA. Sehlke is a professional services and management consulting firm specializing in Financial Management, Acquisition Management, National Defense and Security Program, and Logistics & Supply Chain Management support services. 

Furthermore, Sehlke has earned the International Standards Organization (ISO) 9001:2015 certification by using proven and repeatable processes to capture, analyze and successfully implement our customers’ requirements and achieve high levels of cost and schedule predictability.

Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, has released a statement regarding the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) and the agency’s response to the crisis, Bridenstine reported on March 17, 2020.

“Agency leadership continues to monitor developments regarding coronavirus around the nation. We are closely following the advice of health professionals and the White House Coronavirus Task Force to keep our workforce safe. Implementing best practices early and quickly will increase likelihoods for better outcomes,” said Bridenstine.

In the statement, Bridenstine noted that NASA leadership has decided to elevate all centers and facilities to Stage 3 of NASA’s Response Framework, effective immediately. All employees and contractors will move to mandatory telework until further notice, but mission-essential personnel will continue to be granted access onsite.

There have been a small number of NASA employees that have tested positive for COVID-19. The administration plans to take preemptive steps to diminish the spread of the virus among the workforce and our communities.

“I strongly encourage you and your families to follow all local, state and federal guidelines to stay healthy and to help slow the spread of the virus,” noted Bridenstine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has published many resources available. Additionally, Bridenstine encouraged all NASA employees to follow President Trump’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America.

“Agency leadership will continue to monitor the rapidly-evolving risks COVID-19 poses to our workforce. You should anticipate continued frequent communication from your center director, myself and others. Up-to-date agency announcements and guidelines are available on the NASA People website, please check it often.

About The Wash100

The Wash100 Award, now in its seventh year, recognizes the most influential executives in the GovCon industry as selected by the Executive Mosaic team in tandem with online nominations from the GovCon community. Representing the best of the private and public sector, the winners demonstrate superior leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement and vision.

Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2020 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2020.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions has released the 2019 True Cost of Fraud report in Mexico that surveyed 90 Mexican executives in retail commerce, e-commerce and financial services to show the cost of fraud in Mexico, the company announced on Wednesday. 

“Advanced global solutions prevent fraud as it evolves, even when it crosses geographic borders and organizations. With tools like consortium-based data sharing and bot data management combined with automated alerts, organizations can employ necessary innovations to help them stay ahead of fraudsters," said Rafael Costa Abreu, director of fraud and identity for LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

LexisNexis’ survey revealed that the cost of fraud in Mexico has trended upward, amounting to 1.96 percent of annual revenues of Mexican companies overall, in retail, e-commerce and financial services, compared to 1.75 percent in 2018.

The LexisNexis Fraud Multiplier, which measures the cost organizations actually lose for each dollar of fraud lost, found Mexican merchants in 2019 paid 3.55 times the amount of each fraudulent action, up from 3.39 times in 2018, including losses related to the transaction face value, fees and interest incurred, fines and legal fees, labor and investigation costs and external recovery expenses. 

The report revealed that e-commerce on mobile phones increased to 3.87 times the amount of the lost transaction value, up from 3.75 times in 2018. The fraud growth in the mobile channel has been projected to continue, rising as the number of financial transactions on mobile devices continues to grow. 

The study also shows that many Mexican companies today are not fully equipped to address mobile fraud since they do not track, nor do not have the proper tools to track fraudulent transactions. This is key given that Mexico ranks second in LATAM, after Brazil, as the top cyber attacker in the region.

LexisNexis noted that Mexico’s primary challenge has been verifying identities when people use online channels or mobile phones to transact. Identity fraud accounts for more than one-third of fraud losses in Mexico. Third-party identity theft accounts for 25 percent and synthetic identity fraud accounts for 12 percent.

"Although fraud in Mexico continues to evolve – as seen within this shift towards mobile fraud – organizations can effectively combat fraud with a layered solution approach to not only slow fraud growth, but help stop fraud before it occurs.” 

About LexisNexis Risk Solutions

LexisNexis® Risk Solutions harnesses the power of data and advanced analytics to provide insights that help businesses and governmental entities reduce risk and improve decisions to benefit people around the globe. 

We provide data and technology solutions for a wide range of industries including insurance, financial services, healthcare and government. Headquartered in metro Atlanta, Georgia, we have offices throughout the world and are part of RELX (LSE: REL/NYSE: RELX), a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers across industries. 

The chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees still hope to meet the deadline for the markup of the proposed National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021 amid the coronavirus pandemic, Defense News reported Tuesday.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chair of HASC, plans to conduct the NDAA markup scheduled in April.

“Barring a material change, the Committee plans to proceed with the previously identified mark up date and deliver the NDAA for a vote on the House floor by mid-May,” Monica Matoush, a spokesperson for HASC’s Democratic majority, said in a statement. “While we are exploring other options to coordinate member involvement in the mark up process, no decisions have been made at this time.”

SASC Chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) intends to hold a markup of the defense policy bill by the end of May.

The Senate panel “is continuing to take every step needed to meet this deadline, while also taking necessary precautions” as per the advice of the upper chamber’s attending physician and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” said a spokeswoman for SASC.