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RMA Companies Acquires C Below in Move to Develop Testing and Inspection Services Platform; Ed Lyon Quoted
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RMA Companies Acquires C Below in Move to Develop Testing and Inspection Services Platform; Ed Lyon Quoted

RMA Companies, a portfolio company of OceanSound Partners, has acquired C Below Subsurface Imaging, an organization that provides technology-enabled underground utility locating services.

The transaction will integrate C Below’s operations with RMA’s SiteScan Subsurface Imaging unit as part of RMA’s efforts to build a national testing and inspection services platform, the Rancho Cucamonga, California-based company announced on Tuesday.

“C Below operates with the same client-centric culture and a shared history of technology innovation as RMA, making it an invaluable addition to our family of testing, inspection, and certification services for infrastructure asset owners, contractors, and public agencies,” said RMA CEO Ed Lyon.

Lyon expects the combined reach of the two organizations to allow RMA to support its clients across a broader geographic footprint and present new services.

Chris Loera, CEO of C Below, will lead the acquisition, which serves as a milestone in RMA’s growth strategy.

C Below’s work includes utility locating and mapping services for federal agencies, engineers, architects and contractors involved with infrastructure initiatives spanning numerous end-markets. With the use of specialized equipment, the company’s engineers and technicians offer geophysical capabilities such as vacuum excavation, electromagnetic location, ground penetrating radar, BIM mapping and CCTV pipeline inspection.

These services are intended to impede construction delays by verifying the location, depth and type of buried utility materials.

“With this transaction, we expect to make new technology investments to offer additional service capabilities to our clients across the Western U.S.” Loera said.

“For C Below employees, the strategic combination with SiteScan creates exciting professional growth opportunities for our combined workforce,” he added.

Dave Menefee, former president of C Below, said the company sought out a partner to help extend its reach while ensuring its values and quality of service are not compromised. He is confident that RMA meets these expectations.

The acquisition marks RMA’s fourth since December 2021. Most recently, the company acquired Northwest Geotechnical Consultants, an organization offering geotechnical engineering, environmental consulting, construction inspection and construction materials testing services.

Hypori Closes Series B Investment Led by Hale Capital Partners to Scale BYOD Product; Jared Shepard Quoted
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Hypori Closes Series B Investment Led by Hale Capital Partners to Scale BYOD Product; Jared Shepard Quoted

Hypori has closed its initial $10.5 million Series B investment deal, which was led by Hale Capital Partners and included supplementary funds from Series A investor GreatPoint Ventures and David Petreaus, among others.

These funds are part of a total fundraising round with commitments to invest up to $18 million and represent the expansion and growing value of Hypori and its Halo bring-your-own-device product within the national security and user privacy areas, the Reston, Virginia-based enterprise announced on Tuesday.

Jared Shepard, president and CEO of Hypori, emphasized the importance of the deal in growing the company’s work to improve secure access and interaction with data from the edge.

“Hypori is changing the way the industry thinks about cybersecurity and operating at the speed of cloud to achieve mission success,” he said.

The Halo product is a virtualized Android OS designed to meet the security needs of companies following BYOD policies, especially those that employ hybrid and remote staff who rely on their personal devices to work. It functions individually as a private, virtual workspace on any mobile device and minimizes data at rest or in transit outside of an organization to further secure client data.

Hypori Halo is intended to secure the digital workspace of companies that currently hold these policies, which can decrease hardware and software costs but may produce security risks for an organization’s network and data.

Applying the concept of zero trust to mobile security, Halo shifts the security target from the edge device to a digital workspace in a secure and controlled cloud or data center and allows clients to isolate and safeguard privacy, personal data and organizational data.

The product also allows clients to remove data at rest requirements from the physical device, reduce the risk of data loss and prevent malware from entering an organization from an end-user device.

The product is already being used within the Department of Defense and the defense industrial base. As it becomes more widely adopted within the federal government, the investment funds will enable rapid scaling to support the U.S. Army’s phase 3 BYOD rollout, which is currently providing Halo to over 20,000 users within the Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard.

Martin Hale, managing partner at Hale Capital Partners, will join Hypori’s board of directors as part of the financing.

“With no data at rest and no data in transit, their BYOD solution appears to us to be a game changer. We look forward to supporting Hypori as it scales and delivers unmatched security and ease of use to its customers,” said Hale.

Also joining the board is Rich Sawchak, CEO of Systems Planning and Analysis and former Hypori CFO.

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Army Deploys Google Workspace Collaboration Toolkit to 180K Personnel
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Army Deploys Google Workspace Collaboration Toolkit to 180K Personnel

The U.S. Army has transitioned more than 180,000 personnel to Google Workspace, a suite of productivity and collaboration tools for email, chat and storage functions, C4ISRNET reported Saturday.

The transition comes less than a year after Google secured Impact Level 4 authorization from the Department of Defense for the multi-cloud collaboration toolkit, enabling it to handle controlled unclassified information for federal government clients.

Gabe Camarillo, undersecretary of the Army, said Google Workspace has been working as intended and there have been no glitches or compatibility issues reported since the platform’s deployment.

Army Chief Information Officer Raj Iyer previously disclosed that the Army had been conducting early testing of Google Workspace as an alternate email option for troops who may have lost access to official email accounts amid the Army 365 system transition.

Google Workspace is currently used by the Defense Innovation Unit and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and other federal government organizations.

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Biden Urges Congress to Help Protect Privacy, Competition, Children via Bipartisan Legislation
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Biden Urges Congress to Help Protect Privacy, Competition, Children via Bipartisan Legislation

President Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass a bipartisan measure that would hold Big Tech companies accountable as part of efforts to protect privacy, competition and children.

Biden wrote in an opinion piece published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal that his administration has embraced three reform principles and one is the need to advance federal measures to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens.

“That means clear limits on how companies can collect, use and share highly personal data – your internet history, your personal communications, your location, and your health, genetic and biometric data,” he said.

He urged Congress to restrict targeted advertising and ban it for children.

The chief executive called on lawmakers to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in order for Big Tech companies to take responsibility for the content they post online as well as promote transparency about the algorithms used by such companies to help address discrimination.

Biden also highlighted the need to further advance competition in the tech sector.

“My vision for our economy is one in which everyone—small and midsized businesses, mom-and-pop shops, entrepreneurs—can compete on a level playing field with the biggest companies. To realize that vision, and to make sure American tech keeps leading the world in cutting-edge innovation, we need fairer rules of the road,” he noted.

Additionally, the President encouraged Republicans and Democrats in Congress to unite and find common ground in safeguarding privacy, children and competition.

“There will be many policy issues we disagree on in the new Congress, but bipartisan proposals to protect our privacy and our children; to prevent discrimination, sexual exploitation, and cyberstalking; and to tackle anticompetitive conduct shouldn’t separate us. Let’s unite behind our shared values and show the nation we can work together to get the job done,” Biden added.

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CISA Selects Cloudflare to Provide Registry, Authoritative DNS Services for .gov TLD; Matthew Prince Quoted
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CISA Selects Cloudflare to Provide Registry, Authoritative DNS Services for .gov TLD; Matthew Prince Quoted

Cloudflare has won a contract from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to deliver registry and authoritative domain name system support to the .gov top level domain.

Under the $7.2 million award, Cloudflare is expected to provide managed name servers for the .gov zone as well as authoritative DNS hosting for .gov domain names, the San Francisco, California-based company announced on Friday.

“The Internet has made the United States government more accessible for constituents than ever before, whether they’re applying for a passport, learning health and safety recommendations for their communities or reaching out to a representative,” said Cloudflare Co-Founder and CEO Matthew Prince.

“Having a reliable and secure DNS for government agencies is critical to instill trust in all .gov activity, and working with us to achieve this is a testament to the reliability and security of the Cloudflare network,” he added.

Cloudflare’s responsibilities under the award align with CISA’s aims to minimize the attack surface of .gov-related infrastructure and federal agencies, automate sensitive areas of DNS security management, set DNS records that increase the difficulty of impersonating the government in email by default and improve visibility to enhance the detection and prevention of select DNS ecosystem problems rather than reacting to them.

DNS is seen as a crucial Internet service that is fundamental to the security of applications that sit on top of it and instrumental in driving traffic to .gov domain websites.

CISA selected Cloudflare to provide widely available DNS services necessary for boosting resilience and simplifying security operations for .gov domain users. These services are expected to streamline CISA’s process of delivering .gov domains to federal organizations at no cost.

The security organization first adopted Cloudflare in 2021 to supply a protective DNS resolver product for all federal civilian executive branch agencies.

In December of last year, Cloudflare attained FedRAMP moderate authorization. The software is currently available on the FedRAMP marketplace and is being utilized by more than 40 federal agencies.

OSTP to Implement Scientific Integrity Framework Across Federal Agencies
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OSTP to Implement Scientific Integrity Framework Across Federal Agencies

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has published a first-of-its-kind scientific integrity framework to strengthen the ethical foundation of government science.

The Framework for Federal Scientific Integrity Policy and Practice was created to ensure that the government provides the American public with transparent, accurate information free of political bias.

The roadmap includes a model policy that federal agencies can adopt and a set of tools for continuous assessments and improvements. It also authorizes the establishment of the National Science and Technology Council Subcommittee on Scientific Integrity, which will lead implementation and evaluate government departments’ progress.

OSTP is also requiring the appointment of a scientific integrity official in all agencies, and a chief science officer in branches that provide research funding or conduct or manage such projects.

The framework is based on the January 2022 report, “Protecting the Integrity of Government Science,” which was released by a committee of the White House National Science and Technology Council.

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NOAA Seeks Potential Sources to Support DOC Cybersecurity Operations
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NOAA Seeks Potential Sources to Support DOC Cybersecurity Operations

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a sources sought notice to support the joint operations of its Cyber Security Center and the Department of Commerce’s Enterprise Security Operations Center.

Through the potential partnership, NOAA aims to integrate, correlate and enhance security information systems used by NOAA and its partners as well as numerous other DOC bureaus, the department said in the notice earlier this week.

To fortify the current functions of NCSC and ESOC, NOAA seeks to boost their security information and event management system as well as security orchestration, automation, and response platform, through potential services, according to the notice published on Thursday.

The NCSC and ESOC run five support groups, including the NOAA Security Operations Center, Infrastructure Support, Enterprise Security Services, DOC Enterprise Security Operations and DOC ESOC Engineering Services. They were established to provide round-the-clock monitoring, analysis, detection, event correlation and response to computer-based threats.

Respondents may submit their capabilities statement to NOAA until Jan. 26.

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NASA Discovers Exoplanet Using Northrop Grumman-Built James Webb Space Telescope; Mark Clampin Quoted
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NASA Discovers Exoplanet Using Northrop Grumman-Built James Webb Space Telescope; Mark Clampin Quoted

Researchers at NASA have validated the existence of a planet orbiting another star using the Northrop Grumman-developed James Webb Space Telescope.

The exoplanet marks NASA’s first such discovery made using the Webb telescope and measures at about 99 percent of Earth’s diameter, the agency said on Thursday.

“Webb is bringing us closer and closer to a new understanding of Earth-like worlds outside our solar system, and the mission is only just getting started,” said Mark Clampin, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“These first observational results from an Earth-size, rocky planet open the door to many future possibilities for studying rocky planet atmospheres with Webb,” Clampin emphasized.

Classified as LHS 475 b, the exoplanet was a target of interest from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. It is located in the constellation Octans, which is 41 light-years away, and orbits its star in just two Earth-days.

Data from the observatory indicates that the LHS 475 b is a terrestrial planet that is warmer than Earth by a few hundred degrees. The team is still working to confirm its atmospheric composition.

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Col. Eric Felt Says Commercial Space Platforms Key to Maintaining U.S. Technological Edge
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Col. Eric Felt Says Commercial Space Platforms Key to Maintaining U.S. Technological Edge

Col. Eric Felt, director of space architecture and integration at the U.S. Space Force, said investments in high-priority technologies and commercially available platforms are instrumental to maintaining the U.S. technological leadership in the space domain, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.

“What’s so exciting to the Space Force and the space acquisition community about all this commercial innovation is that we can use it to maintain our technology lead, and deter conflict with our competitors,” Felt said.

Speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association’s “State of the Space Industrial Base” webinar, Felt said there are available space systems that are capable of delivering capabilities to meet warfighting needs.

Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition and integration, also sees the importance of speeding up the acquisition of more commercial technologies to boost the U.S. space capabilities, according to Felt.

“His formula for going faster in acquisition starts with smaller systems, and that includes buying more commercial systems,” Felt said.

Felt also noted that the Department of Defense’s investment strategy can have a significant effect on the space industry, adding that it can either be “super helpful” or “super harmful” to the industrial base.

2023 Space Acquisition Forum

Calvelli is set to share his thoughts on how to transform space acquisition to outpace U.S. competitors at GovCon Wire’s 2023 Space Acquisition Forum on Jan. 18. Click here to register.

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NIH Splits CIO, Center for IT Director Roles
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NIH Splits CIO, Center for IT Director Roles

The National Institutes of Health has separated the roles of the chief information officer and director of the Center for Information Technology following Andrea Norris’ retirement in December. She served for more than a decade in the dual-hatted role, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

Ivor D’Souza, director of information systems at the National Library of Medicine, serves as acting CIT director. Dennis Papula, deputy CIO at the NIH, serves as CIO on an interim basis.

“With Ms. Norris’ departure, we have the opportunity to reevaluate the technology leadership needs of the NIH. We view the roles of the CIT director and OCIO director as distinct,” a spokesperson for NIH told FNN in an email. 

“The director of CIT needs to focus on the unique needs of NIH’s research and clinical enterprise. And we hope to find an individual who can help the NIH institutes and centers advance their scientific goals,” the spokesperson added.

NIH has begun accepting applications for the CIT director position and the job opening will close on March 7. The agency has not yet published a job vacancy for the CIO role.

The spokesperson noted that the CIO post will focus more on security standards and compliance and that the NIH is looking for a leader with experience managing IT functions.

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