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Audit Finds Security Issues With GSA Implementation of Robotic Process Automation
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Audit Finds Security Issues With GSA Implementation of Robotic Process Automation

The General Services Administration Office of Inspector General recently conducted an audit of the agency’s robotic process automation program and has found issues with its security.

In its Aug. 6 audit report, the OIG flagged the RPA program’s non-compliance with GSA IT security requirements, the agency’s failure to consistently update system security plans to address RPA bot access and the lack of a process for removing decommissioned bots, which put GSA systems at potential risk of data exposure.

The OIG noted that although the GSA’s chief financial officer and chief information officer did not entirely agree with the results of the report, they did agree with the recommendations.

The recommendations stemming from the audit include the GSA assessing CIO-IT Security-19-97, the agency’s procedural security guide for RPA, to ensure that its controls are effective and properly implemented; the agency developing oversight mechanisms to enforce compliance with RPA policy; and the agency requiring the updating of system security plans as part of the RPA security approval process to address bot and non-person entity access.

GSA’s implementation of RPA is part of a broader effort to encourage federal agency use of the technology to reduce repetitive administrative tasks.

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10 Startups Chosen to Provide PACAF With Novel Tech
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10 Startups Chosen to Provide PACAF With Novel Tech

The National Security Innovation Network has named 10 ventures to the 2024 Propel Hawaii accelerator.

The NSIN said Tuesday the selected early-stage companies will provide new capabilities for the U.S. Air Force and its Indo-Pacific partners through their novel technologies. These new innovations are intended to bolster the readiness, innovation and agility of the forces.

The cohort of 10 ventures are as follows:

  • Black Cape – high-performance computer infrastructure for data management, mission planning, and secure information sharing
  • Bucephalus – predictive artificial intelligence planning platform that unites different data sources and optimizes supply chains in real-time
  • Confidencial.io – data-blind platform automatically protects PACAF’s sensitive, unstructured content within documents and associated workflows
  • Disruptive Electronic Warfare Machines – provides concealment using man-portable radar target system that emulates modern surface threat radio frequency signatures
  • Lovelace AI – enables proactive decision-making and enhanced operational effectiveness with tailored models to automate near-real-time data analysis
  • Pvilion – solar powered integrated structures that enable intelligent data monitoring and reduce fuel consumption
  • Tagup – machine learning logistics platforms optimize PACAF’s supply and distribution of materiel
  • Tern AI – independently-derived positioning system that enables mission-critical operations in contested environments
  • Zephr.xyz – enhances reliability and accuracy of PACAF’s global navigation satellite system with self-correcting network receivers
  • ZeroMark – AI-driven technology for counter unmanned aerial systems

All cohorts will ideally bring different offerings that cover areas crucial for the next-generation warfighter, particularly in collaborative planning and execution, agile combat employment—or ACE—and camouflage, concealment and deception, or CC&D.

The chosen ventures will collaborate with the Pacific Air Force Science and Technology and the 613th Air Operations Center, Hawaii Technology Development Corporation and the University of Hawaii Office of Innovation and Commercialization to design national security applications from their innovations.

A total of 62 alumni companies of the NSIN Propel have secured $418 million worth of private capital and $130 million in government funding. The 10 ventures from this year will join this exclusive group upon completion of the program.

“The challenges facing the Indo-Pacific are complex and pressing, but the technologies these companies are working on have potential to provide real deterrent value and improve operational efficiency,” said NSIN Venture Portfolio Director Abigail Desjardins.

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10 Startups Chosen to Provide PACAF With Novel Tech
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CISA-FBI Cybersecurity Update Warns of New Royal Ransomware Tactics
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CISA-FBI Cybersecurity Update Warns of New Royal Ransomware Tactics

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI have issued an update on the indicators of compromise and tactics, techniques and procedures linked to Royal ransomware in a previous joint CISA-FBI advisory. The malicious approaches observed recently revolve around Royal ransomware’s rebranding to “BlackSuit” with improved cyberattack capabilities, CISA said Wednesday.

According to the new advisory, phishing emails are among the BlackSuit actors’ most successful vectors for ransomware deployment and data exfiltration.

The actors use the exfiltrated data for extortion, threatening to publicly release them to a leak site if the victim fails to pay ransom ranging from $1 million to $10 million.

CISA and the FBI urge network defenders to adopt mitigation strategies aligned with the Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals that the National Institute of Standards and Technology and CISA developed.

One suggested cybersecurity approach calls for administrator accounts to have a phishing-resistant multifactor authentication, particularly for webmail and virtual private networks.

Other cyber safety suggestions in the update include disabling hyperlinks in received emails and macros by default.

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Senate Bill Seeks to Promote AI Innovation in Financial Services Sector
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Senate Bill Seeks to Promote AI Innovation in Financial Services Sector

A newly introduced Senate bill would enable the private sector and government agencies to collaborate on projects designed to promote artificial intelligence innovation that protects consumers in the financial services sector.

The Unleashing AI Innovation in Financial Services Act, introduced by Sens. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., would establish guardrails at financial regulatory agencies—including at the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—for regulated entities to safely experiment with AI technologies, Heinrich’s office said Monday.

While the financial services industry has been using AI for several years, there are new technology advancements that companies may adopt to enable new financial products and services, Rounds explained.

He noted that the proposed legislation would create sandboxes where emerging technologies can be tested to encourage innovation while maintaining consumer protection.

Controlled testing environments will help strengthen the U.S. financial system and keep the country “at the forefront of global financial technology,” Rounds added.

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DISA Developing Prototype Private Cloud Capability Dubbed ‘Stratus’
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DISA Developing Prototype Private Cloud Capability Dubbed ‘Stratus’

The Defense Information Systems Agency is currently working on the prototype version of a private cloud offering called Stratus, Defense One reported Wednesday.

The service is expected to deliver the same capabilities — large databases, computational power, customer support and infrastructure — as its public counterparts, like the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, but at a lower cost.

Jeff Marshall, acting director for the J-9 Hosting and Compute Directorate at DISA, said at a recent Defense One workshop that in such cases where public cloud use becomes cost prohibitive, “we can generally offer that at a bit better discount for the big items.”

Stratus has been used in Hawaii and is being set up in Europe to ensure fast and consistent connectivity.

“And when you’re talking about mission partners with mission critical activities going on in the Pacific or in Europe, you really can’t have those performance degradations,” Marshall commented.

The DISA official also projected that work on Stratus will enable the cloud capability “to offer [the] same set of parameters” as JWCC “within the next year or two.”

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SandboxAQ Partners With Mayo Clinic to Improve Cardiac Diagnostics
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SandboxAQ Partners With Mayo Clinic to Improve Cardiac Diagnostics

SandboxAQ has announced a partnership with Mayo Clinic to develop technology that aims to advance cardiac diagnostics.

CardiAQ, a magnetocardiography, or MCG, imaging system, aims to provide a faster and more accessible visualization of the heart via magnetic sensors and artificial intelligence algorithms, the AI and quantum technology company announced Thursday.

Kit Yee Au-Yeung, director of SandboxAQ’s medical devices division, said, “This collaboration between Mayo Clinic and SandboxAQ will further this breakthrough MCG technology for cardiac diagnostics.”

CardiAQ’s magnetic sensors will measure minute disparities in the area surrounding the human heart and AI algorithms that can detect electromagnetic threats in hospital workflows.

By obtaining more efficient electrical conduction data from the heartbeat, doctors could detect more unusual patterns and discover other signs of potential cardiac disease in patients.

“CardiAQ captures detailed data from the heart, which could lead to faster, more accurate diagnoses and fill in the gap between low-cost EKG or biomarker tests and high-cost CT scans or invasive angiography,” Au-Yeung added.

Previously, CardiAQ held clinical studies at UCSF Medical Center and New York’s Mount Sinai West Medical Center, where researchers discovered the system requires no cooling or shielding to operate and yields a handful of other benefits.

Researchers will test CardiAQ at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota throughout 2024 and 2025.

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Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko Returns to DARPA as CIO
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Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko Returns to DARPA as CIO

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has appointed Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a cybersecurity leader, as chief information officer.

The appointment marks his return to DARPA, where he first served as a cyber program manager and helped establish the Information Innovation Office as the agency’s cybersecurity office.

“His track record of creativity in addressing critical cybersecurity and IT modernization challenges, as well as his experience as a former program manager, make him well-suited to our unique environment,” DARPA said of Zatko in a LinkedIn post published Wednesday.

The DARPA CIO most recently served as executive in residence at cybersecurity company Rapid7. Zatko also previously held leadership roles at Google, Stripe and Twitter.

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Marine Corps Posts Draft Solicitation to Automate, Optimize Business Operations
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Marine Corps Posts Draft Solicitation to Automate, Optimize Business Operations

The U.S. Marine Corps has issued a draft solicitation for business operations support to the Deputy Commandant Programs and Resources.

According to the Wednesday notice posted on the System for Award Management website, the effort supports phase four of the Marine Corps Business Operations Optimization Team program, which seeks to automate the service’s business processes using the latest technologies.

The government plans to work with small businesses for the upcoming requirement to modernize the USMC’s business processes.

The anticipated work items include enhancing a suite of applications for internal controls and remediation, financial management evaluations, and appointment and authorization duties.

The potential contractor is also expected to accommodate policy changes from the Department of Defense if needed.

Additionally, the selected vendor will provide the necessary personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, transportation, tools, materials and supervision to accomplish the work requirements.

Work on the contract will be performed at a vendor-provided facility and will run for 12 months during the base performance period. It also includes four 12-month periods and a potential six-month extension period.

The USMC will issue a final solicitation on Aug. 22.

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Kathleen Hicks Says DOD Working to Evolve Acquisition Pathways, Contracting Tools
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Kathleen Hicks Says DOD Working to Evolve Acquisition Pathways, Contracting Tools

Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary of the Department of Defense and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, on Wednesday delivered a keynote speech at a conference in Washington D.C., and highlighted some of the initiatives DOD has launched to drive innovation and accelerate the delivery of capabilities to warfighters.

One of the efforts Hicks discussed is the adoption of flexible acquisition pathways and new contracting tools, such as the Commercial Solutions Opening and other transaction authority, to work better with nontraditional defense firms and other commercial enterprises.

“Today, over 200 programs have used Middle-Tier and Software Acquisition pathways, with $57 billion flowing through them since inception — nearly 40 percent just in fiscal ‘24. In some cases, they’re shaving up to six years off delivery timelines,” the deputy DOD secretary said.

“And since January 2021, we’ve obligated $44 billion with OTAs, 61 percent more than at this point in the last administration. Production’s share of that total grew over 12-fold compared to four years ago. That’s real change,” she added.

DOD Innovation Fact Sheet

Those contracting tools and acquisition pathways were cited in the Innovation Fact Sheet DOD released Wednesday.

According to Hicks, the Innovation Fact Sheet covers the department’s “unceasing work to debug DoD’s innovation ecosystem,” efforts to address the valleys of death, investments in data and artificial intelligence and advancement of programs like Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control.

Replicator Initiative

During her speech, Hicks mentioned the efforts the department has launched to advance the Replicator initiative, which seeks to field thousands of all-domain attritable autonomous systems, or ADA2 systems, within the next 18 to 24 months.

Some of those efforts are identifying and validating key operational requirements from combatant commands, selecting initial capabilities to meet those demands, developing acquisition strategies for each capability and submitting reprogramming requests and a spending plan to Congress to speed up program implementation.

“With Congress’s support, we secured needed funding for fiscal year 2024, about $500 million, and budgeted a similar amount for fiscal year 2025,” the DOD official stated.

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NSF Materials Development Accelerator Project Advances With Six Phase 2 Research Teams
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NSF Materials Development Accelerator Project Advances With Six Phase 2 Research Teams

The National Science Foundation has announced the selection of six research teams advancing to Phase 2 of its Convergence Accelerator’s Track I: Sustainable Materials for Global Challenges program aimed at developing solutions to speed up materials development for such industries as semiconductors and plastics.

A total of $30 million has been allocated to the program, which is a partnership with Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, a.k.a. CSIRO, the NSF said Tuesday.

Each Phase 2 team will receive an award of up to $5 million over three years.

The teams will undergo innovation and entrepreneurial training on such areas as product development, financial resources and sustainability planning.

Australian researchers from the University of Wollongong and Western Sydney University, with CSIRO funding, are among the members of the U.S.-led team ReCreateIt focused on landfill waste reduction research.

A team led by IBM’s PFACTS Almaden Research Center is geared to boost development of compostable materials for food containers and semiconductors.

Battelle Memorial Institute leads a research team on recyclable materials for solar panels, while a team headed by the University of Georgia Research Foundation will work on a tool to examine the flow of materials, such as plastics and organics, through local communities.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads two Phase 2 teams, with one focused on establishing a microchip sustainability alliance and the other geared for research on topological materials for low-cost next-generation energy and information tools.

The NSF initiated the Convergence Accelerator program with a request for information in October 2020 for concepts to accelerate the transition of technology from basic research to discovery.

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