The General Services Administration plans to implement robotic process automation at the agency to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

GSA Administrator Emily Murphy described the initiative during the 2018 Imagine Nation ELC conference, noting that the adoption of RPA is meant to supplement the agency’s data-driven efficiency efforts that resulted in $900M worth of savings in fiscal year 2017.

Murphy, a 2018 Wash 100 awardee, said that adopting RPA “in and of itself will save 10,000 hours of work a week” and would give the GSA “that ability to reskill the workforce to high-value work.”

The RPA initiative aligns with the President’s Management Agenda, which the White House promulgated earlier this year.

The PMA calls on federal agencies to transition “time, effort and funding” from the performance of repetitive administrative and compliance tasks “toward accomplishing mission outcomes” through various strategies including the use of tools like automation.

The GSA seeks to roll out RPA within the year.

Margie Graves, deputy chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, has said the government is nearly ready to release the updated version of the Trusted Internet Connections mandate, Meritalk reported Tuesday.

Graves explained at the 2018 Imagine Nation ELC Conference that TIC 3.0 will permit federal organizations to leverage cloud services under the condition that they meet the intent of controls, implement the offerings in their environment and run them in between on-premises software and cloud services.

She added that the modified initiative will also complement the Trump administration’s Cloud Smart Policy, which guides agencies in migrating their applications to a secure cloud network.

Additionally, the new initiative aims to zero out trust in information technology modernization efforts to help the government respond to data breaches.

John Kindervag, field chief technology officer at Palo Alto Networks, believes that the zero trust should be the “grand” strategic objective when dealing with data.

Stephen Kovac, vice president of global government and compliance at Zscaler, also said employing a zero trust approach will help the government protect networks and save costs.

James Geurts, assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy for research, development and acquisition, has said the service should review its acquisition processes and understand manned-unmanned teaming to better participate in expeditionary warfare, National Defense Magazine reported Tuesday.

Geurts noted at the National Defense Industrial Association’s 23rd Expeditionary Warfare Conference that the U.S. armed forces should rapidly respond to threats and field necessary technologies to win over enemies in the battlefield.

He said the Navy is working on organizing its “other transaction” agreements to continue procuring and deploying modern technologies such as artificial intelligence to warfighters.

The service increased the number of its OTAs in 2017 but has not fully leveraged them compared to the other service branches.

Geurts added that there is also a need for the Navy to determine how to split mission assignments with autonomous systems for expeditionary warfare operations.

“The challenge for us is understanding how to make those unmanned systems integrated into our formation in a way that makes sense,” Geurts noted.

The Navy assistant secretary said the service should identify how to incorporate unmanned systems into a concept of employment enabled by manned technologies to give the military a competitive edge.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has released a report that calls for public companies to develop and implement internal accounting controls while taking into account the risks associated with cyber fraud.

“Cyber frauds are a pervasive, significant, and growing threat to all companies, including our public companies,” SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said in a statement published Tuesday.

“Investors rely on our public issuers to put in place, monitor, and update internal accounting controls that appropriately address these threats,” he added.

The investigative report shows that nine public firms lost approximately $100M due to “business email compromises,” which involved threat actors who pretend to be vendors or company executives and use emails to lure corporate staff to transmit funds to their bank accounts.

SEC said the firms involved in the investigation operate in consumer goods, technology, real estate, machinery, financial and energy markets.

The FBI estimates BEC-related fraud has accounted for more than $5B in corporate losses since 2013, according to the report.
 

U.S. Marine Corps Gen Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said information exchange across the intelligence, law enforcement and military communities contributed to the progress in global efforts against violent extremist groups.

He told his fellow defense chiefs at a meeting held Tuesday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland the transregional threat affects national security and confronting the problem requires political, military and fiscal measures, the Defense Department said Tuesday.

“While we recognize that combating violent extremism requires a whole-of-government approach, we also appreciate the military dimension of the challenge and the unique role the chiefs of defense have in influencing, developing and implementing comprehensive solutions,” added Dunford, a 2018 Wash100 recipient.

He reported that the number of worldwide attacks from the Islamic State militant organization decreased by 23 percent during 2017 and the average number of fatalities due to militant attacks declined from 25 in 2015 to three in 2018.

Dunford urged defense heads to develop technical and cyber strategies to mitigate risks of violent extremism.