The U.S. Agency for International Development plans to implement cybersecurity evaluation metrics for contractors as part of its first digital strategy scheduled for release in early 2020, Fifth Domain reported Tuesday.

Michelle Parker, senior policy advisor for the Center for Digital Development at USAID, said the agency intends to evaluate its contractors’ data and privacy policies as well as the operations of their respective chief data, information and information security officers. USAID will also require contractors to identify technologies they intend to use for projects and provide details on potential vulnerabilities and actions for risk mitigation, she noted.

In addition, USAID plans to assess data privacy and cybersecurity standards that comply with U.S. as well as European laws. According to Parker, the agency is meeting regularly with entities like the departments of Homeland Security and State for further recommendations and potential frameworks.

“Moving forward this is going to be a significant change in how we do business,” she said. “For everything digital, we now need to think about how do we secure information and how do we protect the privacy of our beneficiaries.”

Christopher Scolese, director of the National Reconnaissance Office, has said the agency is prioritizing satellite and ground system modernization as well as efforts to accelerate on-board data processing, Space News reported Tuesday.

Scolese told reporters ahead of an Intelligence and National Security Alliance event that the NRO also seeks to leverage small satellites and launch vehicles, in addition to new technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing to update ground systems.

“Clearly we’re going to need a diverse architecture,” he said. “We’re very much looking at proliferated architectures to increase revisit time, to reduce latency and provide resiliency and fast refresh when you need it.” 

According to Scolese, China is “putting spacecraft up very quickly” and the U.S. needs to retain its status as a world leader despite current challenges.

Scolese officially took charge of the NRO in August following his joint confirmation hearing with Gen. John Raymond, commander of the U.S. Space Command, in June.

Lucian Niemeyer, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, said an Energy Savings Performance Contract signed by the Department of Energy with the Navy seeks to help the service improve resiliency when it comes to energy sources, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

“This will truly get us to [our] National Security [goals], which is more efficiency for the future as well as being able to ensure we have reliable, resilient and effective power for us right now,” Niemeyer said of the contract. “We are laser focused on ensuring resiliency to power our platforms and bases for the future.”

The deal will help the service generate over $834M in savings over 22 years, according to the report. Niemeyer said the Navy is partnering with DOE as it looks for possible ways that could provide the service the best advantage in operational and tactical environments.

“We are working with the Department of Energy to ensure regardless of any actions that are taken by anybody, we have a resilient grid and we can still project military power and protect our national security interest. The more we do today, the more deterrence we can put in place making it less likely anyone will ever want to attack our grid because it’s resilient and we have a way of responding very quickly,” he added.

Anne Neuberger, director of the cybersecurity directorate at the National Security Agency, said NSA plans to publish updated cloud security guidance for companies by the end of 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

“We’ll be coming out with an unclassified advisory on the techniques used to compromise clouds and some mitigation advice,” she said Tuesday at the WSJ Pro Cybersecurity Executive Forum in New York.

The upcoming advisory will detail attack methods hackers and nation-state threat actors use and outline measures to counter such threats. NSA’s plan to issue updated guidance comes amid recent attacks facing cloud service providers.

The Electric Power Research Institute was selected has secured a $10.7M research and development funding from the Department of Energy to accelerate solar energy generation and integration and lower solar electricity costs.

EPRI said Monday a large portion of the funding will be used to develop and validate high-fidelity models of photovoltaic facilities for use in planning, operating and securing transmission and distribution of solar energy systems and technologies. 

DOE also tapped the nonprofit organization to demonstrate aggregation and control systems to boost grid services, help solar facilities identify underperformance and increase productivity, create machine learning and vision models for monitoring purposes as well as evaluate PV plant design innovations to reduce costs.

“Considered as a group, these projects bring advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence, and traditional field-based research to inform the deployment of advanced solar generation to support grid reliability and resilience,” said Arshad Mansoor, senior vice president for research and development at EPRI. 

DOE announced in November that it will select 75 research projects to receive a total of $128M in funding to advance solar technologies.