The Office of Personnel Management has established a time frame for the implementation of federal law that requires agencies to identify personnel information technology and cyber-related functions across the government.

Mark Reinhold, associate director of employee services at OPM, said in a memo dated Aug. 1 that agencies must determine the percentage of IT and cyber personnel who hold industry-recognized certifications as well as develop a strategy to  mitigate staff training gaps by December.

He said OPM will collaborate with the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education to perform security data standard coding structure revisions in the Enterprise Human Resources Integration system in an effort to align EHRI codes with the NICE Workforce Framework.

OPM want agencies to start adoption of the revised codes in October and complete revised coding for civilian IT and cyber positions and vacancies by December next year, Reinhold added.

He noted that agencies must submit annual reports on IT and cyber-related civilian “roles of critical need” to OPM from December 2018 through 2022.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the teams that will receive approximately $4 million in total cash awards as the presumptive winners in its cyber defense tournament.

DARPA said Thursday the ForAllSecure research team will receive $2 million for the group’s Mayhem computer system that landed first place in the preliminary results of the Cyber Grand Challenge.

The department also named the TECHx team’s Xandra and Shellphish’s Mechanical Phish systems as second- and third-place winners with cash awards worth $1 million and $750,000, respectively.

Seven teams comprised of white-hat hackers, academics and private-sector experts competed in the challenge, where automated systems worked to detect and patch flawed code and discover opponents’ vulnerabilities.

DARPA said the Cyber Grand Challenge aims to support the development of autonomous systems that can detect, evaluate and patch software vulnerabilities to prevent hacking.

Winners will be awarded at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas before the start of the DEF CON hacker tournament, where Mayhem is set to become the first machine player in the all-human “capture the flag” competition, DARPA added.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed a carbon nanotube-based membrane designed to protect uniformed personnel from chemical and biological agents on the battlefield.

A team of researchers led by Ngoc Bui evaluated the transport functionalities of carbon nanotube pores to design a breathable material, Livermore Lab said Wednesday.

“We demonstrated that these membranes provide rates of water vapor transport that surpass those of commercial breathable fabrics like GoreTex, even though the CNT pores are only a few nanometers wide,” said Bui, who is also lead author of the research paper published in the July 27 issue of the Advanced Materials journal.

Scientists performed filtration tests and found that the CNT-based material repelled dengue virus when tested on aqueous solutions.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency funds the Livermore Lab research project through the Dynamic Multifunctional Materials for a Second Skin program.

Tracee Whitfield, science and technology manager for DTRA’s Dynamic Multifunctional Material for a Second Skin program, said the initiative aims to turn novel materials into protective clothing against biological and chemical defense threats.

DTRA plans to demonstrate the “second skin” concept through swatch-level assessments in 2018, Whitfield added.