Bob Kolasky, an official at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said the supply chain security assessment of DHS is slated for a White House review and approval this week, FCW reported Thursday. 

Kolasky, head of CISA’s National Risk Management Center, said during a public briefing Thursday that the assessment creates a new taxonomy of information and communications technology supply chain risks and classifies the supply chain into five elements and 100 sub-elements. 

“I think it will help through the regulatory process the rulemaking process…to give focus in areas where we think there’s likely to be higher risk,” he told the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board.

Kolasky said the assessment, which was mandated by an executive order signed in May, is one of the three goals the ICT supply chain task force aims to implement this year. The other two goals are creating an inventory of supply chain processes and activities across the federal ICT sector and establishing working groups to identify supply chain-related problems.

Dan Jacobs, a security expert at the General Services Administration, said agencies should deal with cybersecurity with a focus on people and processes as they transfer workloads to the cloud, Nextgov reported Thursday. 

“Many of the problems we face as a security community aren’t actually technical problems at all,” he said Tuesday at a lunch hosted by Symantec. “Many times they’re human problems. If we’re not equipped to deal with that, we’re going to continue to bang our head against the wall trying to figure out the way forward.”

Jacobs, senior security architect for GSA’s Technology Transformation Services and Centers of Excellence program, called on agencies to invest in bug bounty programs and threat intelligence and consider security as a team sport. Agencies should also reassess the types of skills they look for when hiring cyber professionals.

Mike Griffin, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said the move to transfer the Strategic Capabilities Office to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will help resolve bureaucracy issues, Defense News reported Friday. 

Griffin, a 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, told reporters that the SCO’s move to DARPA will help leaders oversee the office “efficiently without adding a whole new superstructure”. Griffin will continue working with congressional oversight committees to address concerns on the reorganization which is expected to be addressed in the Armed Services committees’ final 2020 defense authorization bill over the coming weeks. 

Griffin’s comments come after Chris Shank stepped down as SCO director in June following his appointment to the role in August 2018.

The Department of Defense is working to use technologies such as the F-35 fighter jet’s sensors to support multi-platform transmission of data to improve air dominance in combat, USNI News reported Wednesday. Maj. Gen. David Krumm, director of global power programs under the office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, said at a Mitchell Institute event said the Pentagon aims to establish a “network-connected family of systems” that operate together to gather relevant information for aerial warfare.

Maj. Gen. Michael Fantini, the director of Air Force warfighting integration capability, added that the DoD aims to establish integrated data collation functions between legacy systems and newer platforms. Previously, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Navy conducted data integration testing between an F-35B and an Aegis Combat System equipped with a Raytheon-built Standard Misssile 6.

Maj. Gen. Michael Fantini, the Air Force’s director of warfighting integration capability, said during a panel discussion in Arlington, Va. that the service branch is establishing 10 cross-functional teams, National Defense Magazine reported Wednesday. 

Fantini told attendees at an Air Force Association event that the CFTs will focus on modernizing capabilities for combat power generation, logistics, cyber and space-related activities. He added that there are “elements of equivalency” between the planned teams and the eight CFTs under the Army Futures Command, which was established last year.

The Air Force teams’ creation come as the service continues efforts to develop next-generation air dominance technologies to combat potential threats from China and Russia.

The Department of Defense, General Services Administration and NASA are issuing an interim final rule prohibiting agencies from purchasing telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from selected Chinese vendors. The rule amends the Federal Acquisition Regulation to include a section of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act and covers all existing indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity contracts seeking services or equipment for securing and monitoring critical government infrastructure. 

Blacklisted companies under the regulation include Huawei, ZTE, Hytera Communications, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, Dahua Technology and all other related subsidiaries and affiliates. The rule also bans equipment or services that the defense secretary, director of national intelligence and FBI “reasonably believes to be an entity owned or controlled by, or otherwise connected to, the government of a covered foreign country.”

DoD, GSA and NASA are modifying the System for Award Management to implement visibility on vendors’ use of offerings from the blacklisted vendors.