Michael Gilmore, director of operational test and evaluation at the Defense Department, has said the military continues to face cyber vulnerabilities beyond current efforts to secure its systems, Federal News Radio reported Tuesday.

Jared Serbu writes that Gilmore said in a January report to Congress the service branches do not adequately include realistic and up-to-date cyber threat scenarios in training.

The report indicated that DoD has a shortage of cyber professionals amid increased demand as some members of the cyber opposing forces or “red teams” move to the private sector, while cyber protection teams do not receive the needed training to counter red teams.

“This trend must be reversed if the DoD is to retain the ability to effectively train and assess DoD systems and service members against realistic cyber threats,” Gilmore wrote in the report.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has used the M48 Coordinate Measurement Machine to measure the four mounts that work to support the Primary Mirror Backplane Support Structure of the James Webb Space Telescope.

PMBSS is designed to support the telescope’s 21-foot-diameter mirror and 5,300 pounds of optical tools and other instruments, NIST said Monday.

NASA researchers will use the measurement data to position the components within the structure before they conduct vibration tests on the telescope’s mirror.

“When you have something like this and bring it into orbit, you can’t go up to space and reposition it,” said John Stoup, a mechanical engineer at NIST’s physical measurement laboratory in Maryland.

NASA plans to launch the Webb telescope in October 2018 to gain insights on the formation of the first galaxies and stars in space.

The Department of Homeland Security has authorized four companies to offer a network analysis service to their commercial and government clients as part of DHS’ Enhanced Cybersecurity Services voluntary information-sharing program.

The NetFlow Analysis tool will work to help AT&T, CenturyLink, Lockheed Martin and Verizon identify and examine malicious activity in enterprise computer systems, Andy Ozment, DHS assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, wrote in a blog article published Jan. 26.

He said DHS-accredited commercial services providers use sensitive or classified threat information from the ECS program to prevent unauthorized access and data transfer to their clients’ networks.

CSPs also offer domain name service sinkholing and email filtering services through the program.

An updated ECS Privacy Impact Assessment document from the department’s privacy office says the network analysis platform is not meant to collect, store or use personally identifiable information, Ozment added.

Nextgov’s Aliya Sternstein reported Monday the DHS may provide anonymized cybersecurity metrics information to the National Institute for Standards and Technology, FBI and National Security Agency for program evaluation purposes.

Some civil liberties advocacy groups said the department’s new privacy impact assessment report contains a loophole for agencies such as NSA to monitor Internet users, Sternstein writes.

Justin Herman, SocialGov program lead at the General Services Administration, has unveiled the U.S. Digital Registry to help ensure citizens interact with official third-party digital platforms for the government.

The repository works to authenticate the Web, social media and mobile platforms that agencies use to deliver information and services to the public, Herman wrote in a blog entry posted Friday.

“The rise of third-party platforms in delivering modern public services required us to rise beside them with greater means of maintaining accountability over official government accounts and make it as easy to follow all public services as it was to find one,” the federal social media manager said.

He added that the U.S. Digital Registry also aims to bolster cybersecurity through the deterrence of fake government accounts on Twitter, Facebook and others, as well as support performance reporting and data analysis on the government’s digital engagement efforts.

Government agencies have taken part in a “verification sprint” to authenticate and add their official social media accounts to the repository by March 31.