The Defense Department received at least one vulnerability report from more than 250 ethical hackers who took part in the department’s bug bounty program that occurred from April 18 to May 12, DoD News reported Friday.

Lisa Ferdinando writes Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that 138 of those vulnerability reports during the Hack the Pentagon event were found to be legitimate and qualified for a bounty.

Participants worked to identify bugs in the department’s public-facing websites such as defense.gov, dodlive.mil, dvidshub.net, myafn.net and dimoc.mil, according to the report.

Carter added DoD partnered with San Francisco-based HackerOne to resolve the uncovered flaws.

The Defense Digital Service organization kicked off the $150,000 crowdsourcing initiative in March as part of efforts to strengthen the security of networks and systems across the department.

Lisa Wiswell, DDS digital security lead, said monetary rewards under the program range from $100 to $15,000 based on the number of qualified submissions.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff-hosted Cyber Guard exercise has discussed lessons on possible cyber threat scenarios and response strategies, DoD News reported Saturday.

Karen Parrish writes approximately 800 representatives from 100 organizations including the Department of Homeland Security, Defense Department, Federal Aviation Administration and FBI participated in the nine-day event.

“I believe it’s our ability to team together that’s going to help our nation and the broader coalition… deal with these challenges,” said U.S. Navy Adm. Michael Rogers,  head of U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency director.

Rogers noted that Cyber Guard supports a suite of annual exercises that work to prepare the defense and economic sectors against cyber threats.

Parrish writes that the event utilized a simulated environment in efforts to build on cyber resilience and cooperation.

Other participants in the exercise included 10 National Guard teams representing 13 states as well as power companies, port facilities and foreign allies such as Australia, Canada and the U.K., the report said.

Online Trust Alliance‘s 2016 Online Trust Audit and Honor Roll has included the online federal health insurance exchange portal and the White House’s official website on a list of  top sites based on OTA’s consumer protection, data security and privacy criteria.

OTA said Tuesday it analyzed nearly 1,000 public-facing sites run by the federal government, consumer service companies, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. member banks, internet retailers and news providers.

Recipients of the nonprofit’s Honor Roll designation received a composite score of at least 80 percent and a score of at least 55 percent in three categories: consumer protection; site, server and infrastructure security; and privacy, transparency and disclosures.

The top 10 trustworthy government and industry websites in the OTA study are:

1. Twitter (twitter.com)
2. Healthcare.gov (healthcare.gov)
3. Pinterest (pinterest.com)
4. The White House (whitehouse.gov)
5. Dropbox (dropbox.com)
6. FileYourTaxes (fileyourtaxes.com)
7. LifeLock (lifelock.com)
8. Instagram (instagram.com)
9. 1040.com (1040.com)
10. The Gap (gap.com)

Forty-six percent of audited government sites made the annual Honor Roll and other top scorers in the public sector  include the Federal Trade Commission, Social Security Administration and the U.S. Postal Service.

The consumer services industry scored the highest during the website analysis, with 72 percent of site administrators in the sector qualified for the Honor Roll.

Fifty-five percent of the top 100 FDIC banking websites and 44 percent of the top 500 internet retailers passed OTA’s audit, the group noted.

The news and media sector scored the lowest, with only 23 percent of audited sites made the Honor Roll.

NASA has unveiled the X-57 designation to a research airplane nicknamed Maxwell, which will be equipped with 14 electric motors that serve as propellers.

The U.S. Air Force made the number designation to Maxwell and the space agency will use the experimental hybrid electric aircraft to test new propulsion technology, NASA said Friday.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced the X-plane designation in Washington at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ annual Aviation and Aeronautics Forum and Exposition.

“With the return of piloted X-planes to NASA’s research capabilities — which is a key part of our 10-year-long New Aviation Horizons initiative — the general aviation-sized X-57 will take the first step in opening a new era of aviation,” Bolden said.

X-57 is part of NASA’s Scalable Convergent Electric Propulsion Technology Operations Research project, where the space agency will modify a Tecnam P2006T twin-engine light aircraft to construct the research airplane.

The aircraft is named in honor of Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who is known for his contribution in the field of electromagnetism.