Rick Driggers, principal deputy director of the national cybersecurity and communications integration center at the Department of Homeland Security, will take over as deputy assistant secretary at DHS’ cybersecurity and communications office, FCW reported Monday.

DHS officials told FCW that Driggers will succeed the retiring Danny Toler, who announced plans to leave his post by the end of August.

The CS&C office is part of the department’s national protection and programs directorate and is responsible for securing government and commercial networks.

NCCIC serves as the department’s center for cyber incident response and management and oversees the computer emergency response teams that provide assistance to infrastructure and commercial firms in the event of a cyber attack.

Prior to his current role, Driggers previously served as acting director of human capital at DHS’ NPPD.

He has held other senior leadership roles at DHS such as chief technology officer for NPPD, director of infrastructure information collection division and deputy chief of information analysis requirements division.

He spent nearly two years as director of data and systems integration policy at the National Security Council and more than a year as chief of current operations at the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency.

Driggers served in the U.S. Air Force for more than a decade as a special tactics combat controller.

Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Illinois) has begun to solicit comments from policymakers and industry stakeholders about cyber protections by issuing a discussion draft on a bill that would establish minimal cybersecurity standards for internet-connected devices, Nextgov reported Monday.

Kelly’s measure is a companion bill to Senate legislation – Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 – introduced early this month by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), Cory Gardner (R-Colorado), Ron Wyden (D-Washington) and Steve Daines (R-Montana).

The House bill would form an advisory board to be led by the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The board would be responsible for the development of objectives and definitions for IoT standards and would include leaders from federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Communications Commission and the General Services Administration.

The OMB chief and other agency heads would release guidelines that detail requirements for agencies when it comes to the procurement of IoT devices within six months of the bill’s enactment.

The legislation would also direct contractors to share data with agencies on updates to IoT devices and security support they provide for such devices.

Kelly’s office said the lawmaker may propose the measure in the fall of 2017, the report added.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency‘s Defense Sciences Office has unveiled the first two programs under DSO’s “Disruptioneering” initiative that aims to accelerate the process for investigating fundamental and applied science concepts in a push to drive the development of national security technologies.

DARPA said Friday the first phase of Disruptioneering programs will focus on concept assessment and run for three to six months, followed by a 12- to 15-month second phase if results warrant additional exploration activities.

“For this new Disruptioneering effort, the time from program announcement to when research proposals are due has been shortened to as few as 30 days, and the technical section of proposals can’t exceed eight pages,” said Kristen Fuller, DSO’s assistant director for program management.

“To make the process as straightforward as possible, we’ve streamlined contracting and internal processes to meet an aggressive schedule.”

The Fundamental Design program aims to evaluate fundamental computational and mathematical systems that can represent the optimized designs of mechanical systems.

The Imaging Through Almost Anything, Anywhere program seeks to address challenges related to imaging through metal containers, walls, ground, fog and water.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency plans to develop a machine learning system that incorporates abilities to read, discern, automatically adjust and learn through radio frequencies as part of a new program.

DARPA said Friday Paul Tilghman, manager for the Radio Frequency Machine Learning Systems program within the Microsystems Technology Office, believes there is a need to integrate radio-frequency capabilities to machine learning so that artificial intelligence may be used to monitor radio signals that could present a threat.

“We want to be able to understand and trust what is happening in the Internet of Things and to stand up an RF forensics capability to identify unique and peculiar signals among the proverbial cocktail party of signals out there,” he said.

The program consists of four technical components that focus on signal feature learning, detection of the important visual and auditory stimuli, automatic signal reception adjustment and waveform synthesis for any device, DARPA added.

The agency said in a FedBizOpps notice posted Friday it will hold a Proposers Day on Aug. 31 to discuss the RFMLS program, which will have three technical areas covering the development of algorithms for RF forensics and situational awareness as well as an RF system integrator.

DARPA intends to award up to $4 million annually per award for Technical Areas 1 and 2 and up to $1.5 million annually per award for Technical Area 3.

The notice stated that DARPA will accept proposals through Oct. 10 for work that is scheduled to commence April 2018.

The U.S. Air Force has partnered with SOFWERX to conduct a “rumble-style” battle experiment on unmanned aerial vehicles to collect information for potential drone operations, National Defense reported Thursday.

Heather Wilson, secretary of the Air Force, said the service branch will hold the ThunderDrone rapid prototyping event at a rented warehouse in Tampa, Florida, to evaluate the forms, platforms, effects and data science needed for small UAV operations.

Wilson pointed to the experiment as an example of the branch’s efforts to rapidly innovate and explore acquisition strategies in response to the modernization of adversaries.

Air Force leaders have urged experienced multi-rotor and fixed-wing aircraft pilots to help the ThunderDrone Squadron build, test and fly prototype and proof of concept vehicles.

SOFWERX also plans to conduct ThunderDrone-related events between September and November, including a technology exposition and a prototype rodeo.