DHS Obtains $288M in Inflation Reduction Act Funding to Consolidate Operations; Alejandro Mayorkas Quoted
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DHS Obtains $288M in Inflation Reduction Act Funding to Consolidate Operations; Alejandro Mayorkas Quoted

The Department of Homeland Security received $288 million in funding under the Inflation Reduction Act for three construction projects to reconstitute its facilities.

A portion of the funds will be used to relocate the headquarters of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, DHS said Thursday.

The renovations will take place at the agency’s St. Elizabeths campus in Washington, D.C. DHS is looking to consolidate its operations from 40 down to six headquarters in an attempt to save taxpayers over $1.3 billion in the next 30 years.

The agency also plans to comply with the Biden administration’s Buy Clean Initiative, by utilizing low-embodied carbon concrete, asphalt and steel for construction.

The projects will add office space to accommodate about 6,500 personnel, as well as a parking garage for 1,500 vehicles.

“Locating more of our agencies together enables the Department of Homeland Security to be more cohesive, efficient, and effective,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated. “These projects will save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually and model modern environmental and sustainability standards,” the Wash100 awardee added.

DOD Announces Biodefense Reforms to Boost Efforts Against Biological Threats; William LaPlante Quoted
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DOD Announces Biodefense Reforms to Boost Efforts Against Biological Threats; William LaPlante Quoted

The Department of Defense has released its review of the biological threat landscape outlining key reforms to strengthen the U.S. military’s biodefense posture over the next decade.

The Biodefense Posture Review aims to prepare the U.S. military for catastrophic biological incidents, such as the potential use of advanced biological weapons, through 2035, the Pentagon said Thursday.

“This review outlines significant reforms and lays the foundation for a resilient total force that deters the use of bioweapons, rapidly responds to natural outbreaks, and minimizes the global risk of laboratory accidents,” said Deborah Rosenblum, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs.

Among the reforms in the review is establishing the Biodefense Council to coordinate authorities and responsibilities to develop a collaborative approach to addressing biological threats.

“We’re increasing collaboration and synchronizing efforts across the DOD enterprise—everything from policies and authorities, to research, acquisition, and investments—to meet the department’s biodefense requirements,” said William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and a 2023 Wash100 Award recipient.

The BPR also highlights the importance of training and exercises to identify and close biodefense capability gaps.

John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said the reforms will advance the Pentagon’s efforts to support the joint force and boost collaboration with allies and partners.

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Johns Hopkins APL Develops Safety Verification Tool for Autonomous Vehicles
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Johns Hopkins APL Develops Safety Verification Tool for Autonomous Vehicles

A research team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory has developed a tool to help the U.S. Air Force test and evaluate autonomous vehicles in interactive environments.

The Safe Testing of Autonomy in Complex, Interactive Environments, or TACE, provides live, virtual and constructive environments for AFWERX’s Autonomy Prime testbeds and serves as a verification mechanism for safety runtime assurance, Johns Hopkins APL said Tuesday.

TACE is placed between a vehicle’s safety-critical control and autonomy systems where it monitors commands from the autonomy to the autopilot and passes data, such as position and speed and orientation, back to the autonomy.

To validate the safety assertions of the vehicle, TACE provides a runtime assurance capability that checks failure or violation of safety constraints.

“We recognized the critical need to accelerate autonomy technologies, and over the past ten years we developed TACE to meet various sponsor needs. We look forward to expanding these technologies for Autonomy Prime,” said Chris Eaton, APL’s project manager for TACE.

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Space ISAC Publishes White Paper on Machine Learning Security Operations Framework
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Space ISAC Publishes White Paper on Machine Learning Security Operations Framework

A Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center white paper offers considerations for using machine learning security operations and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems to protect the functionality of national space assets.

Space ISAC said Tuesday the center’s AI and ML community published the white paper on the MLSecOps framework.

Max Spolaor, senior engineering specialist at the Aerospace Corp. and co-author of the paper, described MLSecOps as a game-changing framework that offers the tools and best practices needed to establish and sustain “trust, security and reliability by capturing the data-centric rather than code-centric operational philosophy of AI/ML technologies.”

“Fortifying our machine learning systems with MLSecOps will move us toward greater space resiliency and open new possibilities as the demand for secure, reliable AI technologies in space continues to grow,” said Michelle Archuleta, director of data science at RS21 and one of the report’s co-authors.

Established in 2019, Space ISAC serves as a source of threat security data for space organizations in both public and private sectors. Its founding members include Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Booz Allen Hamilton, the Aerospace Corp., MITRE, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Parsons, Microsoft, Deloitte, L3Harris Technologies and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

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Aera, Battelle Team Up for DOE-Backed Carbon Capture Hub Feasibility Study
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Aera, Battelle Team Up for DOE-Backed Carbon Capture Hub Feasibility Study

Aera Energy‘s federal subsidiary has teamed up with Battelle to study the feasibility of establishing a direct air capture hub at a Kern County, California, oil field and will undergo the Department of Energy’s award negotiation process to execute the project.

DOE chose Aera Federal’s proposed approach for capturing, transporting and storing carbon emissions through a regional sequestration site, the company said Monday.

Battelle will serve as a key partner on the potential $4.5 million effort aimed at demonstrating the viability of a direct air capture venture and technology to support large-scale decarbonization in California.

The other team members are Mosaic Materials and Carbon Capture.

“By integrating technologies like DAC with existing assets on the ground and other decarbonizing facilities to come, we can make real progress toward achieving California’s carbon neutrality goals while creating new jobs and opportunities in Kern County,” said Erik Bartsch, president and CEO of Aera Energy.

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NIST Issues Congressionally Mandated Report on Emerging Tech Areas
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NIST Issues Congressionally Mandated Report on Emerging Tech Areas

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a final report composed of congressionally directed studies on emerging technology areas that are anticipated to be critical to U.S. national security and economic growth.

The NIST report, published in accordance with the American COMPETE Act, covers artificial intelligence, quantum computing, internet of things, blockchain technology, new and advanced materials, unmanned delivery services and additive manufacturing and 3D printing.

The document presents a general overview of each tech area, a supply chain and marketplace assessment and recommendations to develop legislative proposals and policies.

For AI, the literature suggests that Congress should initiate actions to strengthen data privacy and protection laws that protect privacy, civil rights and civil liberties and reauthorize the National AI Initiative Act of 2020.

When it comes to quantum computing, the report calls on the federal government to support research and development efforts related to QC and assess the impact of efforts to make quantum computers available to students and researchers for education, training and experimentation, among other recommendations.

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FBI Promotes Special Agent Janeen DiGuiseppi to Insider Threat Office Assistant Director
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FBI Promotes Special Agent Janeen DiGuiseppi to Insider Threat Office Assistant Director

Janeen DiGuiseppi, former FBI special agent leading the Albany, New York, field office, has been promoted to assistant director of the agency’s Insider Threat Office.

She has been assigned to several field offices around the United States, and worked in different teams focused on violent crimes, drugs, public corruption and intelligence and surveillance, FBI said Monday.

DiGuiseppi was the first woman to be appointed special agent in charge of the Albany field office. Prior to that, she worked at the FBI Training Division’s Curriculum Management Section as section chief, and later deputy assistant director.

Her career at the agency started in 1999 in the Salt Lake City field office. She specialized in public corruption violations, violent crimes and drug cases.

Outside the U.S., her assignments took her to the FBI’s Major Crimes Task Force in Baghdad, Iraq, as well as in Kabul, Afghanistan.

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Patrick Dedham on NETCOM’s Efforts to Help Army Advance Zero Trust Adoption
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Patrick Dedham on NETCOM’s Efforts to Help Army Advance Zero Trust Adoption

Patrick Dedham, deputy to the commanding general to the U.S. Army’s Network Enterprise Technology Command, said NETCOM is overseeing continuous improvement projects for the service branch to achieve a zero trust network.

In an article published Wednesday on the Army’s website, Dedham stated that there are seven pillars of a zero trust architecture: user; data; device; network; automation and orchestration; visibility and analytics; and application and workload.

“NETCOM’s end state is to have a DoDIN-A based on Zero-Trust principles that treat every system connection and endpoint as a threat using four main premises: log and inspect all internal and external traffic, control attempted access to networks, keep network resources secure and verify all sources and resources,” he wrote.

Dedham noted that the command performed a gap analysis on existing Army and Department of Defense capabilities and identified 26 gaps across the seven pillars’ dependencies.

He cited several measures to mitigate the identified gaps such as granular data access control and internet-accessible endpoint management and security.

Dedham also mentioned the activities NETCOM is conducting to support DOD’s zero trust capabilities and highlighted the role of continuous improvement and integration of an Army unified network to enable the service to achieve its end state when it comes to cybersecurity.

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John Ballard Appointed President of National Intelligence University
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John Ballard Appointed President of National Intelligence University

The board of visitors of the National Intelligence University has appointed John Ballard, the former academic dean and provost at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, to serve as president of the federally chartered research university.

He succeeds J. Scott Cameron, who headed the intelligence community’s federal degree-granting institution for six years, according to Avril Haines, director of national intelligence and a three-time Wash100 awardee.

Haines said Ballard brings to the role extensive national security and higher education experience, having previously held positions at the Joint Forces Staff College, New Zealand’s Massey University, the Naval War College, the National War College and the National Defense College in the United Arab Emirates.

She also expressed gratitude to Cameron for leading the NIU through a transformative period, including its transition from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“Thank you to Dr. Cameron, an ODNI plankholder, for his enduring exceptional service and leadership at NIU and the IC, and welcome to Dr. Ballard, who no doubt will benefit from Dr. Cameron’s lasting impact,” Haines said.

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CISA Releases Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative’s Remote Monitoring Defense Plan
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CISA Releases Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative’s Remote Monitoring Defense Plan

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has published a cyber defense plan to help organizations respond to threats against remote monitoring and management software.

The RMM Cyber Defense Plan was developed by the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, which is comprised of industry and government experts, CISA said Wednesday.

The strategy includes two foundational pillars: operational collaboration and cyber defense guidance. The first pillar has two corresponding lines of effort, which involve enhancing information sharing about threats and vulnerabilities, and creating an enduring RMM operational community.

Cyber defense guidance discusses ways to educate RMM end-users and promote best practices to mitigate the exploitation of remote monitoring systems.

The plan builds on the JCDC 2023 Planning Agenda. Organizations are encouraged to review both the RMM defense plan as well as the JCDC agenda.

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