U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott estimates that more than $3 billion in information technology equipment currently used across the federal government will reach the end of their product lifecycle over the next three years, Fedscoop reported Tuesday.

Shaun Waterman writes Scott told audience at a Brocade-hosted federal forum held Tuesday in Washington that he came up with the estimate after he surveyed a few of the government’s large IT suppliers.

He said there will be “no more patches, no more… upgrades, no more spare parts, no longer official support from the companies” for outdated systems, according to the report.

The Hill newspaper reported Tuesday that he called on government officials and industry executives to support a proposal to establish a $3.1 billion modernization fund for agencies’ legacy IT systems.

“I think it’s time to dismount from past practices and modernize,” Scott was quoted as saying by The Hill.

Defense Department Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen has said the Pentagon will replace Common Access Cards with multifactor authentication systems such as biometric technologies, Fedscoop reported Tuesday.

Shaun Waterman writes Halvorsen told an audience at the 2016 Federal Forum that DoD has a two-year plan in place to remove CAC cards from information systems and at the same time retain its public key infrastructure.

“We may still use [CAC cards] to get into a building, but we’re not going to to use them for our information systems,” Halvorsen said.

He added the cards could be replaced with authentication systems that combine behavioral, biometric and personal data information in efforts to integrate with Five Eyes nations and NATO allies, Waterman quoted.

The U.S. Army has updated its flagship website to meet current web standards, add “gloss” and emphasize the service branch’s communications campaigns.

The Army said Monday the creative team for the new Army.mil design worked to adhere with the Enterprise Army Brand and feature colors, typefaces, graphics and the Army logo and camouflage patterns for its branding strategy across magazine, TV, web and newspaper advertising.

“All of the design decisions, the layout decisions, the coding decisions, and the framework we use to display the content, has been driven by the goal to make the site more mobile-friendly … because that’s the direction our audience is moving,” said Zack Kevit, the Army.mil project manager.

Army.mil programmers have also enabled HTTPS and HTTP/2 network protocols on the website to address security, speed and performance concerns.

The website also features new visual centerpiece functions to serve as the Army’s digital bulletin board for promotions of different types of content within one structure, the Army added.

The Democratic National Committee has experienced a data breach that committee officials and security professionals say was conducted by state-sponsored hackers in Russia to steal research data on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Ellen Nakashima writes the hackers gained unauthorized access to the computer network of DNC for nearly a year and compromised the database to read email content.

DNC tapped cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to clean its network and the purge indicated no compromised financial, donor and personal data, Nakashima reports.

“It’s the job of every foreign intelligence service to collect intelligence against their adversaries,” Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike and a former chief of the FBI’s cyber division, told the Post.

The report said DNC discovered the attack in April after its operations chief alerted CEO Amy Dacey to what was perceived as an irregular activity within the network.

NASA has awarded individual $5,000 cash prizes to five teams that won Level 1 of its Sample Return Robot Challenge hosted by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute to help encourage citizen inventors develop new autonomous navigation and robotics technologies.

The space agency said Tuesday Team AI, Alabama Astrorobotics, MAXed Out, Mind & Iron and Sirius have won the challenge to design robots that can autonomously locate, collect and return samples without human control or the aid of Earth-based technologies.

“The intensity and commitment all of these competitors showed is a reflection of the relentless innovative spirit we hope to discover and enable through public challenges,” said Monsi Roman, Centennial Challenges program manager.

All five teams will join Survey and the West Virginia University Mountaineers in Level 2 of the competition that will take place Sept. 2 through 5 for a chance to win or share the remaining $1.36 million purse, NASA added.