The General Services Administration launched a new service to help federal agencies manage software licenses. Bill Zielinski, acting assistant commissioner of GSA’s office of information technology category, wrote in a blog post published on Tuesday that the new software license management service, SLM Fast, seeks to help agency chief information officers, chief financial officers and acquisition professionals control software asset inventories.

SLM Fast, which is offered at no cost to agencies, can help government offices better comply with mandates, optimize unused applications and defend against software audits. “The SLM Fast service capitalizes on the federal government’s immense purchasing power and GSA’s unique position to coordinate software license procurement and management efforts across agencies,” Zielinski wrote.

Zielinski noted the new service could be employed through a memorandum of understanding and can help agencies pursue cloud adoption, achieve cost savings and improve cybersecurity. He said the service leverages a “data-focused approach” allowing the agencies to perform inventory analysis, gain access to custom dashboards to carry out cost-reduction efforts and investment planning and create a roadmap to implement an IT asset management program.
 

Acting Defense Secretary and 2019 Wash100 Award winner Patrick Shanahan officially unveiled the new space development agency, CNN reported Wednesday.

Fred Kennedy, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s tactical technology office, will lead the agency as part of the proposed space force, according to a copy of Shanahan’s memo obtained by the publication. The document says the new agency will advance the development and deployment of military space platforms needed to keep the country’s tech advantage in space for national defense. The agency will focus on building a network of low-Earth orbit satellites to monitor hypersonic missiles.

Michael Griffin, defense undersecretary for research and engineering and fellow 2019 Wash100 Award winner, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that the country needs space assets to track adversaries’ hypersonic missiles.

The Wash100 award, now in its sixth 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 2019 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 2019.

Cristopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said during a House testimony that CISA will address electoral security through its Protect 2020 effort, The Hill reported Wednesday.

Krebs said in his testimony before the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee that the project revolves around identifying cybersecurity priorities, fortifying election systems and addressing auditing issues to assist state and local officials ahead of the presidential election. He added that he plans to establish a long-term staff to work on election security and other cybersecurity operations such as electric grid protection as the need arises. The head of the CISA also plans to travel to Europe in April to conduct a study on electoral threats faced by nations across the Atlantic.

The Wash100 award, now in its sixth 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 2019 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 2019.

Navy Secretary Richard Spencer released a new report assessing the service’s cybersecurity posture.

Spencer wrote in a letter published Tuesday that the Cybersecurity Readiness Review highlights the need to change the service’s data hygiene and business processes to protect data. The review assesses the role of people, culture, resources, processes and governance in cybersecurity and offers recommendations to address resources, policy and procedures needed to enforce cyber resilience and defense, he noted.

“Leadership has already initiated this process as part of a broader review of how best to organize the department to address the overall challenges of information management; to include not only cybersecurity, but also data strategy and readiness, business system rationalization, and artificial intelligence,” wrote Spencer, a 2019 Wash100 Award winner. “We will be working with the Congress to determine what legislative authorities may be required to implement any significant changes,” he added.

The review also examines the best practices the government and the private sector implement with regard to cybersecurity and the ability of the defense industrial base’s cyber measures to protect the Navy’s critical information.

The Wash100 award, now in its sixth 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 2019 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 2019.

The Department of Homeland Security released binding operational directives to direct agencies to implement cybersecurity measures against potential threats, but agencies failed to meet the deadlines outlined in the BoDs, FCW reported Tuesday.

“I think stakeholders were worried about what we would do with the authority,” Gabriel Taran, assistant general counsel for cybersecurity law at DHS, said at an event Monday. “They didn’t trust DHS necessarily to do this, or didn’t think it was the right approach for one entity to direct others.”

Jeanette Manfra, assistant director for cybersecurity at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told FCW in an interview that, “One [principle] we tried to stick with religiously was the ability to independently measure compliance. That was very important to us,” said Manfra regarding the department’s efforts to ensure agencies’ compliance with cyber requirements.

The Government Accountability Office told the publication it will release a report to assess DHS’ process for BoD development, implementation and the metrics the department uses to evaluate agencies’ compliance with the directives. The GAO report is set for completion by this fall.