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House Bipartisan Bills Seek to Further Build Up DOE’s Research Partnerships With NASA, NSF
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House Bipartisan Bills Seek to Further Build Up DOE’s Research Partnerships With NASA, NSF

Members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee have proposed two bipartisan measures that seek to strengthen the Department of Energy’s interagency research partnerships with NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Reps. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., and Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., introduced the DOE and NASA Interagency Research Coordination Act, which seeks to boost collaboration between the two agencies and empower cooperation on multiple efforts, such as constructing a lunar surface infrastructure and advancing manned missions to Mars, the committee said Thursday.

“Together, the DOE and NASA will engage directly with each other on R&D for propulsion systems, fundamental high-energy physics, quantum network infrastructure and more,” said Williams, chairman of the House energy subcommittee.

Also introduced was the DOE and NSF Interagency Research Act, which will advance research collaboration across a variety of areas, including artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences, workforce and education development, advanced manufacturing and physics.

Research and Technology Subcommittee Ranking Member Haley Stevens, D-Mich., sponsored the measure, which was cosponsored by Rep. Jim Baird, R-Ind.

Stevens said the DOE and NSF Interagency Research Act would help promote a cooperative research environment, strengthen education and training and advance initiatives to cultivate a strong STEM workforce.

Missouri Fire Chief Richard Carrizzo Assumes Chairmanship of FirstNet Board; Gina Raimondo Quoted
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Missouri Fire Chief Richard Carrizzo Assumes Chairmanship of FirstNet Board; Gina Raimondo Quoted

Richard Carrizzo, fire chief for the Southern Platte Fire Protection District in Missouri, has been chosen as chairman of the board of the First Responder Network Authority.

He will take over the role for Stephen Benjamin, who resigned on March 31 to serve as director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced Thursday.

Carrizzo has been the district’s fire chief since 1995. In 2020, he was appointed as president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. He is a member of the executive policy leadership of the Regional Homeland Security Coordinating Committee within the Mid-America Regional Council.

He was elected to the FirstNet board in 2018, and again in 2021. He became vice chair as well as chair of the advocacy committee.

“Rich Carrizzo has been an outstanding FirstNet Authority Board member who will bring strong leadership to the organization during the next phase of FirstNet implementation,” Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo commented.

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CISA’s Eric Goldstein: Trusted Public-Private Partnerships Key to Boosting Cyber Defenses
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CISA’s Eric Goldstein: Trusted Public-Private Partnerships Key to Boosting Cyber Defenses

Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, highlighted the importance of building trust with government and industry partners in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Thursday.

In line with the Biden administration’s push for public-private partnerships, Goldstein said CISA is working to promote persistent collaboration and foster trusted alliances with industry organizations through the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative.

Launched in 2021, JCDC is dedicated to enhancing the exchange of cyberthreat intelligence between the government, critical infrastructure operators and the cybersecurity community.

“We’re developing collective-defense platforms, where there is sharing going on persistently between companies and multiple government agencies. It might be the case that CISA has enrichment analysis to bring to bear, or the National Security Agency does, or companies that are in there might as well. We think that’s the right model,” Goldstein said.

According to Goldstein, CISA is also working on outlining the technical details of the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act, which mandates that critical infrastructure operators report breaches and ransomware payments to the federal government.

“We’re working urgently on a notice of proposed rule making, and we’re looking forward to getting that out in advance of the deadline in the statute, which is next year,” he said.

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Xage’s Roman Arutyunov Recommends 10 Actions to Meet CISA’s Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals
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Xage’s Roman Arutyunov Recommends 10 Actions to Meet CISA’s Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals

Critical infrastructure operators and related organizations looking to achieve the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s cross-sector performance goals should consider a variety of actions to protect their systems from threats, according to Roman Arutyunov, co-founder and senior vice president of products at Xage Security.

In a blog post published earlier this month, Arutyunov highlighted the importance of tracking assets, managing credentials and authentication, segmentation and vulnerability mitigation with a 10-step checklist.

“Keeping sensitive data encrypted, and behind multiple layers of defense, and requiring extra layers of authentication in order to access sensitive data, are increasingly urgent for critical infrastructure organizations,” he wrote.

To organize identities and credentials, Arutyunov recommended changing default passwords, separating user and privileged accounts and rotating credentials.

Arutyunov said organizations should implement compensating and commensurate controls for assets lacking credentials, use multifactor authentication, adopt strong encryption and secure sensitive data.

Other actions he listed are limiting connections of OT assets to the public internet, collecting and storing logs, segmenting networks at the most granular level and handling known vulnerabilities.

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IBM Executive Dan Chenok Outlines Recommendations to Use Cloud for Digital Modernization
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IBM Executive Dan Chenok Outlines Recommendations to Use Cloud for Digital Modernization

Dan Chenok, executive director of the IBM Center for The Business of Government, has provided a list of recommendations for agencies to advance the adoption of cloud to accelerate digital modernization efforts across the federal government.

“It is important to have a diverse ecosystem of partners to help government effectively address these challenges as no single IT provider can solve today’s government challenges alone. Government should evaluate collaborative teams from a full spectrum of industry players from global cloud service providers to small businesses,” Chenok wrote in a blog post published Wednesday.

Chenok said that federal modernization efforts should not be geared toward a single cloud service provider, as a hybrid multi-cloud environment offers greater flexibility to support a variety of programs.

Agencies must also implement edge computing to enable devices in remote locations to process data in place or where a mission happens.

Chenok also recommended that agencies reorient incentives to modernize business processes, establish interoperability among multiple cloud and infrastructure vendors and streamline the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program certification process.

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Department of the Air Force Justifies Budget Request in Fiscal Year 2024 Posture Statement
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Department of the Air Force Justifies Budget Request in Fiscal Year 2024 Posture Statement

Top Department of the Air Force leaders recently delivered a posture statement to the House Armed Services Committee to make a case for the department’s $215.1 billion budget for fiscal year 2024.

In the joint statement, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, AF Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown and Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said that the department’s new spending plan reflects key investment efforts vital to addressing priorities under the National Defense Strategy.

They noted the Space Force’s plans to enhance the resilience of systems in positioning, navigation and timing, battle management and nuclear command, control and communications through modernization.

DAF intends to prioritize the implementation of the Air Force Force Generation model to strengthen military readiness throughout the branch and aims to improve operations through its Agile Combat Employment, Flying Hour and Weapon System Sustainment programs.

The department underscored the need to modernize its resources and retire legacy systems in order to defeat growing threats, which are driven primarily by technological advancements.

POC - 2023 Annual Air Force Summit

AF officials Kendall and Saltzman are inductees into Executive Mosaic’s 2023 Wash100. Kendall is one of the speakers at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2023 Air Force Summit, which will be held on July 18. Register to take part in the event.

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NASA Tests Pivot Capabilities of Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RS-25 Engine for SLS Missions
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NASA Tests Pivot Capabilities of Aerojet Rocketdyne’s RS-25 Engine for SLS Missions

NASA completed a hot fire test to study the pivoting capabilities of the Aerojet Rocketdyne’s redesigned RS-25 engine, which will be used for future flights of the Space Launch System.

The agency said Thursday that it performed 12 minutes of gimbaling, or pivoting, on the engine to simulate launch and flight maneuvers of the SLS rocket.

NASA and Aerojet redesigned 12 RS-25 units from the Space Shuttle program as a basis for new versions to be manufactured for the Artemis V lunar mission and beyond.

SLS uses four RS-25 engines, which have a combined thrust of over 2 million pounds during launch. The engine met the 111 percent thrust level and withstood up to 113 percent of power during the test.

The tests took place on April 26 at Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

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Argonne Researchers Use Testbed to Prepare Code for ‘Aurora’ Supercomputer
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Argonne Researchers Use Testbed to Prepare Code for ‘Aurora’ Supercomputer

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are using a test and development system to prepare scientific codes for the Aurora exascale supercomputer being developed at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility.

Sunspot is a two-rack testbed computer equipped with 128 nodes of the same technologies found in the Aurora supercomputer, ANL said Wednesday.

Susan Coghlan, ALCF project director for Aurora, said Sunspot is a miniature version of the supercomputer that enables research teams to “optimize code performance on the actual Aurora hardware.”

Tim Williams, co-manager of the ALCF’s Aurora Early Science Program, added that testbeds like Sunspot allow researchers to scale their workloads to run on larger supercomputers.

Aurora will have over 10,000 compute blades, each equipped with six Intel Data Center GPU Max Series processors and two new Intel Xeon CPU Max Series processors.

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Defense Innovation Unit Seeks Autonomous Tech for Ground Vehicle Navigation
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Defense Innovation Unit Seeks Autonomous Tech for Ground Vehicle Navigation

The Defense Innovation Unit is inviting proposals to prototype an autonomous ground vehicle navigation system for reconnaissance or logistics missions in high-risk unmapped or remote locations.

DIU said the Department of Defense is seeking technology capable of assisted teleoperation, dynamic path planning, and obstacle avoidance.

The agency will select vendors to design unmanned navigation platforms that apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to support maneuver units and aid target detection.

As part of the project, the government will provide test vehicles to navigation tech prototype developers for use in demonstration activities.

The proposed system should include data storage and management features applicable to physical and simulated environments. It should be designed with open architecture and in compliance with industry standards, according to DIU.

Responses to the Ground Vehicle Autonomous Pathways 2 solicitation are due May 10.

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FedRAMP Hits 300 Authorization Mark for Cloud Services
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FedRAMP Hits 300 Authorization Mark for Cloud Services

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program has logged its 300th cloud service approval and a 50 percent growth in offerings that reached high-impact level compliance.

Agencies can view all authorized services from industry through the federal cloud computing initiative’s marketplace and learn to reuse security packages via a step-by-step guidance document, the FedRAMP Program Management Office said Wednesday.

The office added that the number of cloud service offerings with “In Process” status rose 50 percent in the last two years.

CSOs certified under the highest security baseline allow customer agencies to handle sensitive, unclassified government information.

FedRAMP, established in 2011 and managed by the General Services Administration, offers a risk-based approach for assessing and approving platforms from commercial cloud providers.

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