Kelvin Droegemeier, the Trump administration’s new science adviser, said during the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting that fostering artificial intelligence research will drive progress in the field, Geek Wire reported Friday.

Droegemeier, newly appointed director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, added that AI research must assess future demands and capabilities that can “supercharge progress” in the field.

“Getting a handle on this as a portfolio is a real challenge, but in my view, if we’re able to do that; it will really help us think about how to strategically invest and move forward,” he noted.

Droegemeier has called for a periodic assessments of U.S. research and development efforts including those done by the government, academe, industry and non-profit sectors. He also proposed addressing harassment issues faced by research entities and intends to create a network of “Alpha Institutes” to work on issues such as space exploration, climate change and disease eradication.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Office of the Inspector General has identified the agency’s weaknesses in the areas of security, technological modernization and management.

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Jay Lerner, FDIC inspector general, said Thursday in a report the agency needs to focus on cybersecurity risk oversight, financial technology innovation, information security management, crisis preparation and enterprise risk management. Other areas of improvement include threat information sharing with banks, human capital management, acquisitions process and regulatory cost measurement.

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FDIC OIG intends for the report to inform decision makers and other stakeholders on the agency’s needs.

The departments of Agriculture and Homeland Security as well as the Small Business Administration are expanding their use of enterprise mobility ­management to provide federal workers better security and mobility with their smartphones, FedTech reported Monday. 

Recently, DHS launched a pilot program to integrate the Lookout Mobile Security with EMM technology, AirWatch, to detect and blacklist potentially malicious third-party apps on employee phones. The agency uses EMM tools to handle and secure ­credentials for more than 100,000 mobile devices.

Several agencies and offices within DHS use different EMMs, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard that rely on MobileIron, while the Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement use BlackBerry’s Enterprise Mobility Suite. 

Meanwhile, SBA utilizes the technology to provide mobile security for over 2,000 dispersed workforce across 128 locations. In 2018, the agency expanded its mobile network with iOS and Samsung Galaxy devices. The move allowed SBA to maximize coverage in remote areas and increase its internal apps for employees.  

USDA also made some updates in its EMM use to secure its mixed mobile environment that includes 32,000 government-issued mobile devices that use iOS. The effort focused on blocking application-based threats, such as malware and vulnerabilities. The agency is blacklisting and whitelisting capabilities to maintain third-party apps approved for business use.

La’Naia Jones, deputy chief information officer of the Intelligence Community, discussed how the Security Coordination Center facilitates the sharing of cyber threat intelligence and information on malware among IC agencies, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

“So they work with all of the agencies to coordinate threats to work on malware signatures to prevent attacks and threats, to ensure that everyone has the same information from a threat posturing, and the security perspective,” Jones said of the SCC on Federal Monthly Insights — Strategic Threat Intelligence.

“They coordinate, whether it be general information or upcoming or anything that came out, they really are charged with ensuring that everyone is aware and tracking the most current status information mitigation techniques, and everything that’s included with that,” she added.

Jones said the SCC is directly linked to the community and other sensitive government agencies and was formed following the expansion of the Intelligence Community Incident Response Center five years ago. She added that her office plans to advance the use of cloud and automation in threat information sharing.
 

Lawmakers denied a proposal to move nearly $90M in funding for cybersecurity research to the newly established Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency within the Department of Homeland Security, FCW reported Tuesday. Congress passed a new funding bill that would retain the budget at the Science and Technology Directorate at DHS. 

With the funding, lawmakers tasked S&T to launch a new test bed examining new cybersecurity technologies and to begin the Next Generation Cyber Infrastructure Apex project to support the financial services sector in protecting their systems and networks.

S&T also received $5.2M to continue its Data Analytics Engine to help DHS analyze big data for law enforcement, fraud detection, risk-based screening and other applications.