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GovCon Index Continued Growth Trend Last Week
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GovCon Index Continued Growth Trend Last Week

Last week, Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Index continued to grow with an 0.11% increase that lifted the average to $154.69. The previous week, GovCon Index went up by 0.07%.

GovCon Index is an aggregate index that tracks data from 30 key government contractors in real time. This information provides users with a glimpse into the performance of each company and broader industry trends, empowering them to assess the financial state of the GovCon market.

CGI led last week’s growth trend with an uptick of 1.22%. The enterprise was followed by HII, which rose by 0.99%. Palantir Technologies (+0.86%) took third place, and the fourth and fifth spots were held by Tetra Tech (+0.62%) and Boeing (+0.41%).

GovCon Index experienced the highest overall growth on Thursday, when it grew by almost 1% after a slump on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Check out last week’s market reports to get the full story on daily GovCon Index performance. To access the full list of tracked companies, click here.

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GovCon Industry Leaders Chuck Prow & Jill Singer Honored With Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 Award
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GovCon Industry Leaders Chuck Prow & Jill Singer Honored With Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 Award

Chuck Prow, CEO and president of V2X, and Jill Singer, vice president of federal solutions at AT&T, were honored on Monday as winners of Executive Mosaic’s coveted 2024 Wash100 Award.

Each year, the top 100 executives of consequence in the federal government and government contracting sector are named to the prestigious Wash100 list. These executives are the ones to watch in the coming year as they are sure to deliver positive impacts across multiple facets of the GovCon landscape.

Prow earned his tenth Wash100 Award this year for driving significant company growth and securing major contract awards. Under Prow’s leadership, V2X achieved a record $1 billion in revenue and a backlog of $13.3 billion in the third quarter of 2023. Read more about why we chose Chuck Prow for this year’s Wash100 Award here.

With this year’s win, Singer has now appeared on the Wash100 list seven times. She is honored as a 2024 Wash100 recipient for her work advancing 5G innovation and spearheading network modernization for government customers in support of national security missions. Read Jill Singer’s Wash100 profile here to learn more about the executive’s achievements.

Chuck Prow and Jill Singer are also contestants in GovCon’s most exciting race, the Wash100 popular vote competition! You can cast your ten votes for these and other deserving winners at Wash100.com.

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DCSA Issues Industry Security Letter on Use of Commercial Cloud Services
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DCSA Issues Industry Security Letter on Use of Commercial Cloud Services

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency has released an industry security letter, or ISL, clarifying the process for verifying government contracting activity authorization for the use of commercial cloud services — a.k.a. CCS — by a contractor in performing work on a classified contract as required by DFARS, or the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement.

The ISL also includes information on the revision made to instructions for DD Form 254 concerning contract security classification specification, DCSA said Thursday.

The agency issued the letter to inform cleared vendors and DOD components of developments under the National Industrial Security Program, or NISP.

According to the letter, the DCSA NISP authorizing official may authorize Impact Level 6 under one of the provided methods to verify the contract requirement.

In the event that a contractor later decides that it anticipates using CCS in performing contract work, a clause in DFARS states that the company should seek approval from the contracting officer before using cloud services, according to the document.

“Proof of the contracting officer’s approval may be accepted in a variety of forms, to include an email from the contracting officer or empowered official,” the letter reads.

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DOE to Test Westinghouse Electric Company Operational Technology for Potential Cyber Vulnerabilities
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DOE to Test Westinghouse Electric Company Operational Technology for Potential Cyber Vulnerabilities

Westinghouse Electric Company has partnered with the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response at the Department of Energy to participate in the agency’s Cyber Testing for Resilient Industrial Control Systems program.

The DOE said Thursday that CyTRICS aims to identify potential cyber vulnerabilities in operational technology components submitted by participating companies by subjecting them to testing with the help of state-of-the-art analytic tools provided by the agency’s national laboratories.

In the case of Westinghouse, one of its instrumentation and controls systems for nuclear applications will be tested at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Commenting on the effort, Westinghouse Vice President of Global Instrumentation & Controls Kenneth Lunz said, “[This] partnership supports our commitment to provide products fortified against cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.”

For his part, CESER Director Puesh Kumar said, “This partnership with Westinghouse will be a critical component in strengthening the supply chain cybersecurity of critical complements used to operate U.S. energy systems.”

IARPA Selects 4 Teams for New Quantum Computing Research Program
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IARPA Selects 4 Teams for New Quantum Computing Research Program

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has selected four teams to participate in a new foundational research program to demonstrate universal fault-tolerant quantum computing — also known as UFTQC — that can be used in applications relevant to the intelligence community.

ETH Zurich, Harvard University, the University of Innsbruck and the University of Sydney have received contracts to conduct foundational research under the Entangled Logical Qubits, or ELQ, program, IARPA said Thursday.

ELQ aims to demonstrate the complexities of preserving error correction and fault tolerance in operations between logical qubits to realize UFTQC, which has the potential to outperform classical computing in certain cases.

“IARPA’s previous quantum programs showed that the fundamentals behind UFTQC work in practice, and now we are taking the next significant step toward a UFTQC future through ELQ and its success,” said ELQ Program Manager Michael Di Rosa.

The Air Force Research Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories will provide test and evaluation services for the program.

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NASA to Deploy RF Instrument to Observe Lunar Surface’s Radio Energy Environment
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NASA to Deploy RF Instrument to Observe Lunar Surface’s Radio Energy Environment

NASA will send a low-frequency radio spectrometer to space to observe the dynamic radio energy environment near the moon’s surface to determine how natural and human-generated activity there could interfere with science experiments.

The Radio wave Observation at the Lunar Surface of the photo-Electron Sheath, or ROLSES, is one of the NASA-provided payloads set to fly aboard Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander for the IM-1 mission, the agency said Thursday.

ROLSES features four antennas mounted at two different heights to provide a variety of radio observations on the lunar surface.

“This way, we can measure the electrons’ density based upon distance from the surface,” said Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy, lead of the ROLSES instrument project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Then we can see how the number of electrons decreases as you go farther from the surface.”

The IM-1 mission will carry science and technology demonstration payloads to the moon’s South Polar region as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

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GAO Report: ONCD Needs Performance Metrics, Cost Estimates for National Cybersecurity Strategy Implementation
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GAO Report: ONCD Needs Performance Metrics, Cost Estimates for National Cybersecurity Strategy Implementation

The Office of the National Cyber Director needs to develop better performance metrics and cost estimates for implementing the National Cybersecurity Strategy in order to ensure its effectiveness, the Government Accountability Office said.

GAO on Thursday released a new report noting that while ONCD has a good strategic foundation, it needs to describe in detail its plans for outcome-oriented performance measures as well as resources and estimated cost.

The government watchdog noted that ONCD fully addressed four out of six desirable characteristics under the National Cybersecurity Strategy. This includes purpose, scope and methodology; problem identification and risk assessment; integration and implementation and organizational roles, responsibilities and coordination.

However, ONCD only partially met requirements in goals, subordinate objectives and performance measures and investments and risk management.

ONCD disagreed with GAO’s recommendation about estimating implementation costs, but agreed to establish outcome-oriented performance measures.

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FedRAMP Outlines Required Actions for Cloud Service Providers in Response to CISA’s Emergency Directive
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FedRAMP Outlines Required Actions for Cloud Service Providers in Response to CISA’s Emergency Directive

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program has listed some actions it requires CSPs, or cloud service providers, to perform in response to an emergency directive released by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to mitigate vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure and Ivanti Policy Secure products.

In a blog post published Thursday, FedRAMP stated that CSPs that maintain federal data are covered by CISA’s Emergency Directive 24-01.

CSPs that fall within the scope of the directive should assess and implement the actions outlined in the document and upload responses to the incident response folder in their respective FedRAMP secure repository.

Responses for required task 2e and task 3 in the Supplemental Direction should be uploaded by Feb. 5 and Feb. 28, respectively.

FedRAMP is also requesting that CSPs send an email to the FedRAMP Program Management Office and all agency customer authorizing officials with notification of the completed action and upload a copy of email notifications to the incident response folder in their respective secure repository.

The program released the actions in consultation with the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board and CISA.

NIST’s CHIPS R&D Office Issues Notice of Intent to Create Digital Twin Manufacturing USA Institute
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NIST’s CHIPS R&D Office Issues Notice of Intent to Create Digital Twin Manufacturing USA Institute

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has expressed its intent to create a new semiconductor manufacturing institute that will use digital twin technology for production, packaging and assembly.

In a notice of intent published Thursday on Federal Register, NIST’s CHIPS Research and Development Office said it will launch a competition for a new public-private Manufacturing USA Institute with a contract value of $200 million and performance period of five years.

The agency aims to catalyze curriculum and best practices for advanced digital twins and modeling, which can be a training ground for the semiconductor workforce. The institute will also provide access to digital models and production processes by creating a marketplace for the technology in chips manufacturing.

CHIPS R&D is scheduled to issue a notice of funding opportunity in the second quarter of this year.

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Leslie Beavers on DOD’s Zero Trust Implementation Efforts
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Leslie Beavers on DOD’s Zero Trust Implementation Efforts

Leslie Beavers, principal deputy chief information officer of the Department of Defense and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, said DOD has initiated efforts to establish a zero trust environment, such as defining the requirements from a capability standpoint and setting objectives for military services to meet the deadline for the capability by 2027.

“The services have submitted their plans to us, and those are currently being evaluated. There are more than 90 capabilities that are required to meet the basic level of zero trust,” Beavers told FedTech Magazine in an interview published Tuesday.

“We’re focusing on the required compliance capability at its highest level — tag the people, tag the data and audit. We’re well on our way,” she added.

Beavers stated that DOD will continue to implement perimeter defense and perform identity and access management and endpoint monitoring activities.

The principal deputy CIO discussed the challenges DOD faces when it comes to implementing zero trust, including the need to facilitate data sharing while safeguarding information, and cited efforts to upgrade existing technologies and buy new platforms to build zero trust.

When asked about the lessons learned that she could share with other CIOs, she said the process begins with “getting back to basics and doing basic cybersecurity.”

“With zero trust, you’ve got to know what you have and who’s on the architecture. Starting with the basics and getting really good at that is the first and biggest step. You do that as you start trying to map out your architecture so you can instrument it to tag the people, tag the data and audit it,” Beavers noted.

POC - 5th Annual CIO Summit

Beavers will deliver a keynote at the Potomac Officers Club’s 5th Annual CIO Summit on April 17. Register here to learn more about the latest modernization strategies and how industry can help meet the priorities of federal CIOs.

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