The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program is requiring third party assessment organization personnel, including senior and junior assessors and penetration testers, to comply with the specific requirements set by the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation.

Starting on Oct. 1, FedRAMP and A2LA will review assessment reports to ensure that accredited 3PAO personnel are competent and qualified to evaluate documents from cloud service providers, FedRAMP said Thursday.

Personnel qualification requirements under the R311 policy cover training, years of experience, certification qualifications and technical proficiency activities.

FedRAMP noted that a 3PAO with a team consisting of both qualified and unqualified personnel will not be permitted to perform inspections of CSP documents.

The National Reconnaissance Office has modified a 10-year Electro-Optical Commercial Layer contract it awarded to Maxar Technologies last year in order to give the U.S. government long-term access to digital elevation models of the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

The changes support NRO’s agreement with the National Science Foundation and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to continue allowing public access to 3D models, which are vital in climate change research, NSF said Thursday.

The recently finalized pact among the three organizations is positioned to enable NGA to share the imaging simulations with NSF’s university partners, which will update the NSF’s ArcticDEM and Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica projects until 2032.

Researchers will be gain access o the digital simulations on NGA’s website, as well as the NSF Polar Geospatial Center site operated by the University of Minnesota.

The Department of Justice has moved to consolidate National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team functions into the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section under DOJ’s criminal division.

Nicole Argentieri, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal arm, said in her remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the combined office will prioritize initiatives to combat ransomware.

“The National Cybersecurity Strategy highlights ransomware as not only an important concern, but as a threat to national security,” Argentieri noted.

She added NCET will continue to investigate and pursue cases against criminal activities in the cryptocurrency area and collaborate with other agency partners to prevent the use of digital assets in finance-related crimes such as money laundering.

Argentieri also announced that NCET Deputy Director Claudia Quiroz will lead the team on an interim basis and replace Eun Young Choi, the group’s inaugural director. Quiroz is a long-time assistant U.S. attorney from the Northern District of California and has been one of the original deputy directors of NCET since its inception.

The U.S. is partnering with the government of Panama to explore ways to build a secure and diverse global semiconductor supply chain under the International Technology Security and Innovation Fund.

The State Department said Thursday the U.S. government will review Panama’s semiconductor sector, regulations, infrastructure and workforce to inform potential future collaboration funded by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.

ITSI Fund allocates $500 million over five years to implement new programs to support the global ICT and semiconductor supply chains.

For the semiconductor sector, the initiative will back programs that aim to secure critical material inputs, strengthen international policy coordination, expand and diversify downstream capacity in the Indo-Pacific and the Americas and protect national security.

ExecutiveBiz will host the 2023 Microelectronics Forum on July 25 to discuss with semiconductor experts, government officials and industry leaders the future of the U.S. microelectronics sector. Click here to register and see the list of confirmed speakers for the forum.