CISA, NIST, NSA Urge Organizations to Prep for Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration
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CISA, NIST, NSA Urge Organizations to Prep for Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have recommended that organizations begin preparing for post-quantum cryptography migration by developing roadmaps for quantum readiness.

Organizations that handle sensitive information must plan their implementation of post-quantum cryptographic standards to be released by NIST in 2024 to boost their security against malicious use of quantum computers, the NSA said Monday.

An effective quantum-readiness roadmap must begin with an inventory of quantum-vulnerable systems and assets before starting the quantum risk assessment processes. During the inventory, organizations should engage with supply chain vendors to identify technologies that need to migrate to PQC.

The agencies also encourage organizations to create migration plans prioritizing the most sensitive and critical assets.

Technology manufacturers and vendors of products that support the use of quantum-vulnerable cryptography should begin reviewing the draft PQC standards to begin planning and testing for integration.

“The transition to a secured quantum computing era is a long-term intensive community effort that will require extensive collaboration between government and industry,” said Rob Joyce, director of cybersecurity at NSA and a two-time Wash100 awardee.

SBA Extends Moratorium on 8(a) Bona Fide Place of Business Requirement
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SBA Extends Moratorium on 8(a) Bona Fide Place of Business Requirement

The Small Business Administration has extended — until Sept. 30, 2024 — the moratorium on the requirement for small businesses to establish a bona fide place of business in a particular geographic area when awarded any construction contract under the 8(a) Business Development Program.

The moratorium was instated in 2021 to address challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since enabled federal agencies to increase construction procurements with small and disadvantaged businesses in rural and remote areas, SBA said Monday.

A bona fide place of business refers to the location where a participant regularly maintains an office with at least one full-time employee. It does not include construction trailers or other temporary construction sites.

“With this extension, the SBA under the Biden-Harris Administration is again demonstrating its commitment to creating opportunity and leveling the playing field for American entrepreneurs,” said SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman.

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Army CIO Leonel Garciga Focusing on Interim Software & Data Policies
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Army CIO Leonel Garciga Focusing on Interim Software & Data Policies

Leonel Garciga, chief information officer of the U.S. Army, said he is prioritizing the development of interim policies for software, cybersecurity and data to help the service keep pace with technological advances in the private sector, Federal News Network reported Monday.

One of the first interim policies the military branch is working on prizes containers, which are used to package and deploy software.

“We’re going to focus on some things that are huge leaps, both from a security perspective and from the ability to build software out faster. Container guidance — that’ll be coming out soon,” Garciga said at a conference.

Garciga, who assumed the CIO post in late June, said his office plans to release new policy on the use of data on government systems.

“We need to remind folks that there are some rules around this, and we need to protect DoD data and we need to protect personal information too. We’re going to be putting some stuff out there,” Garciga noted.

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Robert Hale & Ellen Lord on 5 Areas of Improvement in Defense Budgeting Process
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Robert Hale & Ellen Lord on 5 Areas of Improvement in Defense Budgeting Process

Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution Chair Robert Hale and Vice Chair Ellen Lord said speed and agility of defense budgeting could help the Department of Defense strengthen deterrence and keep its advantage over strategic competitors.

The commission has identified five improvement areas for the PPBE process, Hale and Lord wrote in an opinion piece published Friday in The Hill. The first line of effort calls for DOD to update business processes to foster innovation adoption and warfighting adaptability.

Another area of improvement is considering reforms to PPBE documents to clearly communicate how DOD’s budget implements the defense strategy.

Lord and Hale said DOD should provide Congress update on its budget by conducting a mid-year briefing to improve communications.

The two previous Wash100 Award recipients called on the Pentagon to advance use of data analytics and digital business systems to streamline the PPBE process and ensure that its workforce can implement each phase of the process.

Lord is former undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and Hale is former DOD undersecretary for comptroller and chief financial officer.

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Amentum Secures Spot on $3.2B IDIQ to Provide Engineering Services for DOD, Other Federal Organizations; Jill Bruning Quoted
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Amentum Secures Spot on $3.2B IDIQ to Provide Engineering Services for DOD, Other Federal Organizations; Jill Bruning Quoted

Amentum has been selected for a spot on a 10-year, potential $3.2 billion contract for the development, engineering and deployment of technologies for multiple Department of Defense and federal civilian organizations.

Under the multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity vehicle, Amentum is expected to deliver aggressive, scaled and agile engineering offerings to the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command, Defense Logistics Agency and other government agencies, the Chantilly, Virginia-based company announced on Tuesday.

Jill Bruning, president of the engineering, science and technology group at Amentum and a Wash100 Award recipient, said that the Gateway to Sustainment contract is “another great opportunity” for the company to deliver its services to the U.S. Army while harnessing its experience in technology and engineering modernization.

“G2S offers Amentum the ability to work with the government to sustain our operational forces,” added Jack Kasiski, the organization’s senior vice president of operations.

Amentum’s work is intended to support the accelerated acquisition and deployment of counter-IED and mine detection, electronic warfare, aircraft survivability and training systems. The contract leaves room for the enterprise to receive additional orders for ancillary engineering, obsolescence monitoring and test and evaluation services.

As an awardee, Amentum will leverage its experience in science, technology and engineering modernization to support the IDIQ’s focus areas of supply chain agility, hybrid organic contractor support, Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages and Form, Fit and Function replacement parts.

This award closely follows multiple DOD contract wins for Amentum. Yesterday, the department announced that the company was issued a $591.6 million Navy award to provide foreign military sales customers with systems integration, systems improvement, sustainment material, training and associated support services for foreign military sales customers.

Just weeks earlier, Amentum booked an $818 million contract also from the Navy to modernize and maintain F-16 aircraft that are used for Navy air combat training and assist the Viper Maintenance Group with adversary training fleet expansion.

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GSA Launches Equity Study on Remote Identity Proofing; Sonny Hashmi Quoted
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GSA Launches Equity Study on Remote Identity Proofing; Sonny Hashmi Quoted

The General Services Administration is conducting a study to test six remote identity-proofing technologies with up to 4,000 participants as part of efforts to evaluate the impact of race, ethnicity, income, gender and other socio-demographic and socio-economic factors on the identity proofing process.

The Equity Study on Remote Identity Proofing will be performed for 12 weeks between the summer and fall of fiscal year 2023.

GSA said it will analyze the collected data from research participants and work with the Center for Identification Technology Research at Clarkson University to look for any algorithmic bias.

“This is an important study and initiative to test and validate facial recognition and matching algorithms and technology to identify barriers across demographic lines,” said Sonny Hashmi, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at GSA.

“The results will not only inform government strategy moving forward, but will also lower barriers for more Americans when they interact with their government digitally,” added Hashmi, a previous Wash100 awardee.

GSA intends to release a report in 2024 that will offer a statistical analysis of proofing checks’ performance and look at the causes behind any inconclusive results.

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DHS, Army, DOE Collaborate on Hydrogen-Powered Emergency Response Vehicle Development
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DHS, Army, DOE Collaborate on Hydrogen-Powered Emergency Response Vehicle Development

A hydrogen-powered emergency relief vehicle prototype backed by the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Energy has completed road testing.

The H2Rescue truck made its way from California to Washington, D.C., stopping at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Denver headquarters along the way, DHS’ science and technology directorate said Thursday.

H2Rescue was conceptualized in 2021 as part of an initiative by the DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office.

Accelera, the energy technology business of Cummins, built the vehicle under a cooperative agreement with USACE’s Engineer Research and Development Center-Construction Engineering Research Laboratory.

DHS S&T, DOE, FEMA, the Army Ground Vehicle Power and Mobility and the Naval Research Laboratory provided design and funding assistance to the project.

The truck houses a mobile command center, can carry up to 33,000 pounds of load into a disaster zone and generate power at a 15-home, three-day capacity.

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CISA’s Christine Lai, Jonathan Spring: AI Software Must Be Secure by Design
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CISA’s Christine Lai, Jonathan Spring: AI Software Must Be Secure by Design

Christine Lai and Jonathan Spring of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said technology developers should ensure that artificial intelligence software are secure by design.

The AI engineering community should apply Secure by Design practices, which other safety principles and other guardrails rely on, and institute Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures and other vulnerability identifiers, Lai and Spring wrote in a blog post published Friday.

“Since AI is software, AI models – and their dependencies, including data – should be captured in software bills of materials. The AI system should also respect fundamental privacy principles by default,” they noted.

They discussed the importance of AI-specific assurance issues and the difference between adversarial inputs that drive misclassifications and security detection bypass.

Lai is AI security lead and Spring is a senior technical adviser at CISA.

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Johns Hopkins APL Exploring Conversational AI’s Potential to Support Tactical Combat Care
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Johns Hopkins APL Exploring Conversational AI’s Potential to Support Tactical Combat Care

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is using large language modeling to develop technology that can help soldiers with no medical training to administer care to injured comrades on the battlefield.

APL said Thursday the Clinical Practice Guideline-driven Artificial Intelligence project uses an algorithm based on the Tactical Combat Casualty Care guidelines, which the Department of Defense Joint Trauma System developed.

The lab’s Research and Exploratory Development Department is leading the project, which leverages the Reconfigurable APL Language model Framework designed by the laboratory’s Intelligence Systems Center. The software allows users to create LLM-based applications and their corresponding conversational AI agents.

CPG-AI has demonstrated its ability to answer medical care questions in plain English while guiding soldiers through the tactical field care process.

The researchers plan to use the next phase of the study to improve accuracy in collecting and categorizing data from clinical practice guidelines they obtained from DOD’s Joint Trauma System.

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Navy, General Dynamics Kick Off Construction of 32nd Virginia-Class Submarine
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Navy, General Dynamics Kick Off Construction of 32nd Virginia-Class Submarine

The U.S. Navy and General Dynamics Electric Boat have initiated construction of Virginia-class submarine SSN 805.

Naval Sea Systems Command said Thursday that it held a keel-laying ceremony at GD Electric Boat’s Groton, Connecticut, shipyard for the future USS Tang submarine, named after two predecessors that made combat history.

The vessel will be a Virginia-class Block V submarine, which is nuclear-powered to displace up to 8,000 tons of shore-based targets at stealth mode.

Such underwater craft are also designed for stealth surveillance as well as mine delivery and mapping.

The two previous USS Tang ships were commissioned in 1943 and 1951, respectively. The first one, SS 306, hit or sunk more than 30 enemy vessels in the Pacific during World War II, earning four battle stars and two Presidential Unit Citations.

SS 563, the second USS Tang, was used during the Vietnam War, and was ultimately decorated with four battle stars.

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