The U.S. Air Force has invited computer security professionals from across the U.S. and select partner nations to participate in a bug bounty event that will be based on the Defense Department‘s ‘Hack the Pentagon‘ program.

The service branch said Wednesday its office of the chief information officer will sponsor the ‘Hack the Air Force‘ event as part of the Cyber Secure campaign that seeks to utilize talent from within and outside the DoD.

The service branch said the event will help expand the participation pool to include ‘white hat’ hackers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K.

David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff and an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2017, said the approach to draw on talent from local and partner-nation citizens will help boost cybersecurity through the identification of security vulnerabilities.

Some small and large companies utilize white hat hacking and crowdsourced security concepts to help defend networks against potential malicious attacks, the service branch noted.

“The additional participation from our partner nations greatly widens the variety of experience available to find additional unique vulnerabilities,” said Peter Kim, Air Force chief information security officer.

“We’re mobilizing the best talent from across the nation and among partner nations to help strengthen the Air Force’s cyber defenses,” added Lisa Disbrow, acting secretary of the Air Force.

The Defense Digital Service helped the service branch establish the Air Force Digital Service team that will help convert the current competition for technical talent into a partnership between public and private sectors.

Raj Shah, head of the Defense Department‘s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, has said DIUx expects to transition some of the 25 prototype projects to operational use by service branches over the next two months, Defense News reported Tuesday.

“Some of the earlier [projects] are getting closer to validation of the prototypes, and we’ll have a lot more to say about that in the next two months when they transition,” he told reporters Monday.

Aaron Mehta writes DIUx has awarded 25 contracts worth approximately $48.4 million combined as of March, a figure that represents a $12.3 million increase since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016.

Some of DIUx’s prototype projects include a Sensofusion-built anti-drone weapon system for the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization and U.S. Marine Corps’ warfighting laboratory, Orbital Insight’s analytics development project for DoD and Shield AI’s mapping software for the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command’s unmanned system, the report added.

Rob Joyce, White House cybersecurity coordinator, has said his office will be involved in the new Office of American Innovation’s effort to integrate cybersecurity into a program to modernize the federal government’s information technology platforms, Nextgov reported Monday.

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, leads the new White House office the president established in March.

Joseph Marks writes Joyce said in his speech Monday at Georgetown University’s International Conference on Cyber Engagement that he will work to ensure that cybersecurity and innovation are “intertwined.”

Joyce, who assumed his post in March, noted that the White House is “very close” to releasing an executive order on cybersecurity that would reflect the Trump administration’s three priorities.

Those cyber priorities include the need to protect government technologies and networks, safeguard critical infrastructure and ensure rules and good behavior in international cyber space, he noted.

Joyce added that Trump also plans to increase adoption of shared services, make agency leaders accountable for cyber attacks at their organizations and create a “comprehensive enterprise risk management approach” in the federal government, the report added.