The Department of Homeland Security has opened its new center building to serve as part of its headquarters at the St. Elizabeth’s campus in southeast Washington, D.C., Federal News Network reported Friday. The planned 1.3 million-square foot campus will house over 13,000 DHS employees once the latest phase of construction is completed. 

According to Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, the final plan for the campus seeks to achieve a 17,000 employee capacity to include personnel from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Office of the Secretary, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office.

DHS has requested for $224 million in the fiscal 2020 spending bill to cover the construction of CISA’s facility at the St. Elizabeth’s campus. The department expects construction work on the complex to conclude by 2026.

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program released a new document made to guide commercial and government parties in understanding FedRAMP’s cloud service offerings. The document entitled “Marketplace Guidance” contains explanations on how to achieve designations across the program and how to manage changes in initial agency partners, FedRAMP said Thursday. 

This new guidance entry succeeds FedRAMP’s previous “Agency Authorization: Requirements for In Process Designation” document and supports the program’s effort to consolidate and simplify documents. FedRAMP has over 220 industry partners and more than 250,000 marketplace visits annually. The Marketplace Guidance document is accessible via this link.

The U.S. Navy has received the future USS Cincinnati (LCS 20) from Austal USA, which will be the 10th Independence variant to join the service’s fleet of littoral combat ships. The company delivered the ship to the Navy during a ceremony at the company’s facility in Mobile, Ala., Naval Sea Systems Command said Friday. The Navy completed acceptance trials of USS Cincinnati in early February. The service aims to commission the ship this fall in Gulfport, Miss. 

“I look forward to celebrating the commissioning of this great ship alongside the crew later this year,” said Capt. Mike Taylor, LCS program manager. “This ship will play an essential role in carrying out our nation’s maritime strategy.” 

Austal USA is developing five more Independence-variant ships. The company hopes to deliver the future USS Kansas City (LCS 22) this fall, while the future USS Oakland (LCS 24), Mobile (LCS 26), Savannah (LCS 28) and Canberra (LCS 30) are in early stages of construction. The Navy expects to acquire four additional LCS after accepting USS Canberra.

Christopher Krebs, director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, announced that the government has seen an increase in cyber attacks by state-backed Iranian hackers, who targeted federal agencies and private companies in the U.S., Bloomberg reported Sunday. 

“Iranian regime actors and proxies are increasingly using destructive ‘wiper’ attacks, looking to do much more than just steal data and money,” Krebs said in a statement. “These efforts are often enabled through common tactics like spear phishing, password spraying, and credential stuffing.” 

The increase in cyber attacks comes amid the conflict between Iran and the U.S. President Trump decided to withdraw from a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran in 2018, and announced a plan to impose another round of economic sanctions on the Middle Eastern country this month. 

On Thursday, the president reportedly gave the green light for an offensive cyber strike that disabled computer systems that Iran used to control rocket and missile launches. Krebs said amid the growing incidents of cyber attacks against the U.S., agencies and companies should increase defense using new cybersecurity tools, such as multi-factor authentication. 

Soraya Correa, chief procurement officer at the Department of Homeland Security, said DHS’ component agencies need to identify acquisition programs to be suitable for their operations amid the federal government’s increasing focus on “best-in-class” contracts, FCW reported Friday. Correa cited the Transportation Security Administration’s Flexible Agile Scalable Teams contract vehicle and DHS EAGLE Next Gen contract as examples that the department’s procurement efforts are not always confined to best-in-class contracts and category management policies.

“When you talk about programs like FAST — or any of the other programs that we have out there, even EAGLE Next Gen — they are based on our having reviewed our requirements against the available set of vehicles that are out there and our determination that we need to go forward with a particular procurement,” Correa said.