The Department of Energy has recognized Hill Air Force Base for the installation’s ongoing energy savings effort that began in 2018. The base received DOE’s 2019 Federal Energy and Water Management Award that honors efforts of significance in energy efficiency, water conservation and renewable energy use, the U.S. Air Force said Sunday.

Hill AFB pursues energy savings efforts under a $91.1M 23-year contract with Energy Solutions Group that provides infrastructure updates across 328 buildings. The efforts are also intended to reduce the number of external energy sources that USAF relies on for missions.

Energy Solutions Group has helped the Hill AFB install new LED lighting and update steam distribution systems, control systems and ventilation at the base. Hill AFB also features a 3.55-megawatt solar array that contributes renewed energy to the base’s electric grid.

USAF expects these efforts to reduce the base’s annual energy consumption by 9 percent and energy costs by 13 percent. The service branch also hopes for Hill’s distributed and renewable energy portfolio to rise by 30 percent.

“There are Department of Defense directives that guide us to reduce our energy consumption, so this will go a long way to us actually meeting those requirements,” said Nick King, energy and utility manager at Hill AFB.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has pushed back the release of its revised cybersecurity standards for Department of Defense contractors until after the review of a related set of standards is completed, Inside Defense reported Friday.

NIST delayed its issuance of Special Publication 800-171 Revision 2, known as “Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Systems and Organizations,” due to the Office of Management and Budget’s pending completion of its review of SP 800-53. Revision 5 of SP 800-53 was originally intended to cover controls on supply chain, system design, privacy and cyber resiliency matters.

NIST noted that it put the release of SP 800-171 on hold “due to dependencies on SP 800-53.” SP 800-171 includes guidelines for cyber incident reports that DoD contractors handling unclassified information must be able to achieve.

The Office of Management and Budget has found that cybersecurity breaches faced by federal agencies dropped 12 percent from 35,000 to 31,000 in fiscal year 2018, Fifth Domain reported Saturday.

The FISMA FY 2018 Annual Report to Congress states that almost 7,000 of the cyber attacks resulted from phishing scams and that 9,600 cases were classified under “improper usage” or “any incident resulting from violation of an organization’s acceptable usage policies by an authorized user.” OMB noted that the federal government is facing common shortfalls including inconsistent patch management as well as lack of data protection, network segmentation, authentication procedures and constant monitoring.

In addition, the report found that agencies couldn’t determine the causes of 27 percent of the cyber attacks. In fiscal 2018, the federal government funneled almost $15 billion for cybersecurity efforts. The Department of Defense accounted for more than half of the reported amount.