Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said at a Washington Post-hosted forum Wednesday he believes the Defense Department can better understand and monitor the network of Islamic State militants through the utilization of deep-learning machines.

“The momentum against ISIS is more than any other time in our campaign,” he told columnist David Ignatius during an onstage interview at the Post’s Securing Tomorrow event.

Work, an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2016, explained that a Silicon Valley-based company has developed a deep-learning technology that works to extract large amounts of data.

The firm was able to show images of the downing of a Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane over Ukraine in July 2014 and a Russian surface-to-air missile vehicle near the shootdown incident with its technology, he added.

He said DoD collaborates with U.S. partner nations as part of the department’s strategic campaign against adversaries like the Islamic State militant group.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has published an updated version of the Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide by the Defense Department chief information officer in response to feedback from industry and mission partners.

DISA said Monday the CC SRG v1r2 release also includes a revision history and a comment matrix, which work to facilitate understanding of the changes among cloud service providers and enable them to provide immediate feedback.

“The new version fittingly represents the evolution we are going through to refine our processes and better position the department to enable secure options to migrate systems and data to the cloud,” said John Hickey, DISA chief information officer and risk management executive.

The update applies feedback to CC SRG v1r1 document released in January and provides guidance on DoD security objectives to CSPs that provide cloud computing technologies and services to the department, DISA said.

The agency added that the updated guide aims to help public and private stakeholders manage cloud service authorization policies and requirements.

NASA has teamed up with the National Science Foundation in an effort to develop an instrument that can detect exoplanets by measuring the “wobbling” of stars caused by the gravitational pull of a nearby planet.

The NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research program aims to utilize the future NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler Spectroscopy instrument to be built by a Pennsylvania State University research group , the space agency said Wednesday.

Suvrath Mahadevan will lead the research group, which will work to build NEID through 2019, NASA added.

Paul Hertz, NASA astrophysics division director, said NEID along with the WIYN telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory could support the search for new planets and lead to other future discoveries.

NASA said the instrument could also follow-up on ongoing planet-hunting missions such as the Kepler/K2 and complement the James Webb Space Telescope and Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope for other potential discoveries.

The exoplanet exploration program office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the NEID project.

A Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program office plans to add a “readiness capabilities assessment” to the FedRAMP process in an effort to help vendors demonstrate their cloud technology and service offerings early on.

The revamped process will require cloud service providers who seek a FedRAMP Ready status to complete a system evaluation with a third-party assessment organization rather than going through documentation reviews by the FedRAMP’s program management office, according to an announcement published Monday.

The program aims to help “CSPs and agencies to achieve FedRAMP authorizations faster without negatively impacting risk and quality of security packages.”

The FedRAMP PMO has also started to gather industry comments on draft versions of the FedRAMP Readiness Assessment Report Template and the FedRAMP Readiness Assessment Guidance.

CSPs and 3PAOs can submit their input for those documents through April 29.

Government delegates from the U.S. and Germany held a two-day meeting to discuss their decade-long cooperation on efforts to meet their strategic objectives in the field of cybersecurity.

Officials from both countries agreed to continue their efforts to promote Internet freedom and enhance coordination of cyber incidents at the fourth annual U.S.-Germany Cyber Bilateral Meeting that kicked off March 22 in Washington, the State Department said Thursday.

Both delegations said they will continue to collaborate to protect human rights on the Web, promote multi-stakeholder framework to Internet governance and safeguard critical infrastructure from potential cyber threats.

The two countries have also agreed to facilitate information sharing on cyber issues, implement the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe’s “confidence-building measures” in an effort to reduce cyber risks and help other countries establish their capacity in cyber space through the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise.

Christopher Painter, coordinator for cyber issues at the State Department, and Ambassador Thomas Fitschen, director for international cyber policy at Germany’s federal foreign office, told delegates that the 2017 Cyber Bilateral Meeting will be held in Berlin, Germany.

Gina Loften, vice president and chief innovation officer of IBM‘s federal business, has said she believes agile methodology can help agencies create information technology applications to deliver citizen services.

Loften wrote in a guest piece published Tuesday on Federal Times the agile development model has been used in the private sector and works to enable organizations to make platforms based on end-user needs.

“Because design thinking puts the user first, it could result in better outcomes, which would enhance the ultimate mission of various federal agencies,” she added.

She said an agency that aims to adopt the agile methodology should establish a collaborative culture that will allow technology developers to exchange ideas throughout the development process.

Loften also recommended that agencies use the strategy to modernize public service websites for mobile device users and believes doing so can help increase citizen interaction with the government.