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FCC’s Jessica Rosenworcel Orders Investigation Into Mobile Providers’ Consumer Data Disclosure Compliance
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FCC’s Jessica Rosenworcel Orders Investigation Into Mobile Providers’ Consumer Data Disclosure Compliance

Jessica Rosenworcel, chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission, has directed the FCC’s enforcement bureau to investigate whether mobile carriers comply with the commission’s rules that require them to disclose to consumers how they share and use geolocation data.

Rosenworcel also announced Thursday the release of responses from the country’s top 15 wireless service providers to a request for information issued in July on how their businesses handle and retain sensitive consumer data.

“Our mobile phones know a lot about us. That means carriers know who we are, who we call, and where we are at any given moment. This information and geolocation data is really sensitive. It’s a record of where we’ve been and who we are. That’s why the FCC is taking steps to ensure this data is protected,” Rosenworcel said in a statement.

She also called on consumers to file data privacy complaints via the FCC website in order for the commission to initiate action under the law.

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CISA Urges Critical Infrastructure Sectors to Prepare for Post-Quantum Cryptography Transition
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CISA Urges Critical Infrastructure Sectors to Prepare for Post-Quantum Cryptography Transition

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has released a new insights report outlining the potential impacts of quantum computing systems on the 55 national critical functions that contribute to the U.S. national security.

The CISA Insight report provides actions that critical infrastructure and government network owners and operators could take before pursuing the capabilities of quantum computers, the agency said Wednesday.

CISA encourages that all critical infrastructure owners follow the guidance and the Post-Quantum Cryptography Roadmap to ensure a smooth transition to quantum computers.

The roadmap recommends that organizations conduct an inventory of their current cryptographic technologies, create acquisition policies related to post-quantum cryptography, and educate their workforce about the upcoming transition.

Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and a previous Wash100 Award winner, named the transition to post-quantum encryption a priority in his vision to achieve cybersecurity resilience.

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President Biden Appoints Kimberly Cheatle as Next US Secret Service Director
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President Biden Appoints Kimberly Cheatle as Next US Secret Service Director

President Biden has appointed Kim Cheatle, a more than 25-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service, to be the next director of the federal law enforcement agency tasked with overseeing protective operations for top U.S. leaders.

Cheatle, who will succeed James Murray in the director role, currently serves as a senior director at PepsiCo North America responsible for managing facilities, personnel and business functions, the White House said Wednesday.

“Kim has had a long and distinguished career at the Secret Service, having risen through the ranks during her 27 years with the agency, becoming the first woman in the role of Assistant Director of protective operations,” Biden said in a statement.

Cheatle was the first woman to be named assistant director of protective operations and held several leadership positions during her nearly three-decade career at the Secret Service, including as special agent in charge of the Atlanta Field Office.

She also served as an assistant director at the Secret Service’s Office of Protective Operations.

In 2021, Biden awarded Cheatle with a Presidential Rank Award in recognition of her exceptional performance.

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New Report Outlines Recommendations to Achieve Space Dominance; Gen. John Raymond Quoted
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New Report Outlines Recommendations to Achieve Space Dominance; Gen. John Raymond Quoted

The Defense Innovation Unit, U.S. Space Force and Air Force Research Laboratory have jointly released a report outlining recommendations to develop a space industrial base that will retain U.S. dominance in commercial, civil and national security space.

The 2022 State of the Space Industrial Base Report recommends that the U.S. conduct innovation and policy reform and increase partnership with the private sector to prevent China from surpassing the U.S. in space superiority.

According to the report, China aims to surpass the U.S. as the dominant space power by 2045 and in order to impede Beijing’s ambitions, Washington needs to accelerate the deployment of commercially-sourced space technologies designed for both civil and national security applications.

“The advantage America enjoys today stems from our space industrial base. We must work together to ensure that it remains a strong, effective, and innovative partner in sustaining American space superiority,” said Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, the chief of space operations and a three-time Wash100 Award recipient.

The report also provides evaluations and recommendations in eight topic areas: the long-term ‘North Star’ vision; launch services; hybrid space communications; in-space transportation and logistics; next-generation power and propulsion; remote sensing and traffic management; policy and finance; and workforce and science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

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GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks: Companies Lacking Essential Emerging Technologies
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GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks: Companies Lacking Essential Emerging Technologies

Chuck Brooks, a highly esteemed cybersecurity leader as well as an influential member of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Expert program, recently published a feature exploring the latest and most critical challenges that organizations are facing to innovate and implement emerging technologies in the 4th Industrial Era.

In a feature article with SkyTop Strategies, GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks provided his insight into what the C-Suite and shareholders should know about which emerging technologies will impact the business ecosystem in 2022 and beyond.

Here’s an excerpt from the feature from GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks.

“For companies that want to excel in the new digital economy, the business objectives of reliability, quality, cost-efficiency, and responsive customer service are integral to success,” Chuck Brooks explained. “Industry has spent years developing technologies and processes to meet those objectives and improve operational capabilities.”

In addition, GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks also discussed the impact of each critical aspect that’s impacting our industry, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA), predictive analytics, 5G as well as other significant areas of development such as 3D printing, blockchain and quantum computing.

He also discussed the importance of protecting user data in all digital transformation efforts as we continue to adapt to the latest emerging technologies. Chuck Brooks emphasized that our most vital and critical infrastructures all operate in a digital environment and things like network, cloud and supply chain security will be paramount in the future.

“The pace of innovation is growing so rapidly that it is becoming exponential as each year passes,” said GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks. “The emerging technology areas I described above are just the tip of the iceberg, as we really are amid a major paradigm shift in applied scientific knowledge.”

You can read all the content from GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks through Executive Mosaic on GovCon Wire.com, including the recent Video Interview that he did specifically discussing cybersecurity and government tech market trends.

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DMI Awarded Governor’s Citation to Recognize MDGOVAX Contact Center; CEO Jay Sunny Bajaj Quoted
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DMI Awarded Governor’s Citation to Recognize MDGOVAX Contact Center; CEO Jay Sunny Bajaj Quoted

DMI announced on Wednesday that the global digital transformation services company has received a Governor’s Citation in recognition of the MDGOVAX Contact Center. 

“Serving 15 agencies across the state, DMI has been Maryland’s trusted partner for multiple complex mission-critical programs that span cybersecurity, modern contact centers, application development, managed mobility and more,” said DMI CEO Jay Sunny Bajaj. 

The company was recognized during the recent MACo Summer Conference and received the honor from Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.

Through the MDGOVAX Contact Center, DMI has partnered with the state to deploy a next-gen digital contact center in just seven days, which provides citizens a way to quickly receive information related to COVID-19 as well as schedule an appointment for a vaccine and even arrange transportation.

The contract center fields as many as 75,000 calls per day while leveraging the latest modern technology capabilities and data intelligence, combined with trained and empathetic agents to directly support the citizens of Maryland in the most comfortable and interactive way possible.

The contact center continues to deliver the Maryland Department of Health with invaluable data that provides insights into what programs and initiatives could be run to improve COVID-19 resource delivery across the state.

The honor comes after DMI was awarded a recent task order to manage the Maryland Department of Health’s 988 Crisis Hotline, which services some of Maryland’s most vulnerable populations.

 “When the pandemic hit, DMI was ready and eager to put our skills and capabilities to work in support of our local communities,” Jay Sunny Bajaj added. “This was a true partnership in collaboration, and we are honored to be entrusted with such mission-critical work such as this and the 988 Crisis Hotline.”

About DMI 

DMI is a global leader in digital strategy, design, transformation, and support services. We bring together an integrated set of industry and technology solutions that combine both public and private sector expertise to deliver human-centric innovation at scale. 

Born digital, DMI has been delivering secure, mission-critical technology solutions since 2002 for more than a hundred Fortune 1,000 enterprises, various state and local government agencies and all fifteen U.S. federal departments.

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USACE, Maryland Transportation Department Ink $4B Chesapeake Bay Restoration Project Partnership
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USACE, Maryland Transportation Department Ink $4B Chesapeake Bay Restoration Project Partnership

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Baltimore District and the Maryland Department of Transportation have greenlighted a $4 billion ecosystem restoration project in Dorchester County.

USACE said Tuesday representatives from both parties signed a project partnership agreement to set their respective roles, responsibilities and financial obligations for the Mid-Chesapeake Bay initiative aimed at restoring remote habitats on James and Barren islands.

The restoration project will cover 2,072 acres of lost remote island habitat, which may include low and high marsh, upland areas, mudflat, ponds, channels and submerged aquatic vegetation.

“Rebuilding James and Barren islands will promote wildlife, restore coastal shorelines, and provide us with a long-term placement site for dredged material from port shipping channels, allowing us to accommodate larger ships bringing more cargo and business to Maryland,” said James Ports, secretary of MDOT.

Materials USACE dredged from channels and anchorages serving the Port of Baltimore will be used for the project, with Barren Island possibly beginning to accept dredged material by 2024 and James Island by 2030.

An initial contract award for the Barren Island phase one effort is anticipated in the coming weeks. The Mid-Bay project is expected to be completed in 2067.

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DHS Eyes Cybersecurity Self-Assessments for Vendor Base; Ken Bible Quoted
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DHS Eyes Cybersecurity Self-Assessments for Vendor Base; Ken Bible Quoted

The Department of Homeland Security is working on a rule that would allow contractors to evaluate their compliance with cybersecurity requirements through self-assessments instead of implementing a program that relies on third-party assessors, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

During the fall of 2021, a subset of DHS contractors received a self-assessment questionnaire designed to evaluate their compliance with a 2015 Homeland Security Acquisition Regulation for protecting sensitive data.

Ken Bible, chief information security officer at DHS, said the exercise has made the department to consider implementing the approach on a wider scale.

“We were able to actually take a statistically relevant subset of the contracts using not self-attestation, but a self-survey, and actually use statistical means to say, ‘Did that give us a valid assessment of the maturity of our vendor base?’” Bible said Wednesday at an event. “And we’re gaining more and more confidence that, yeah, it could.”

He said the approach also enabled DHS to identify “outliers,” including some vendors facing difficulty in documenting their compliance with cyber practices.

“And so now we’re looking at what do we do with that with respect to prior to award?” Bible said. “That’s really kind of the real question is, can we take that technique and extend it so that we’re able to not use a self-attestation, but use a self-assessment to gauge the cyber maturity of a vendor and make that a criteria by which we would select for an award.”

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Brian Conrad: FedRAMP Team Aims to Move Forward With Automation
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Brian Conrad: FedRAMP Team Aims to Move Forward With Automation

Brian Conrad, acting director of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, said his office will work to further simplify cloud security assessment and approval processes through automation while ensuring that vendors will continue to help protect federal data.

He told an audience at the FCW-hosted FedRAMP Summit that agencies have reused authorizations under the program more than 4,100 times to date.

Conrad added that 276 companies hold certification to offer cloud products and services to the federal government.

As part of its modernization efforts, the FedRAMP team worked with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2021 to implement a common programming format – called the Open Security Controls Assessment Language — for agencies, providers and third-party assessors.

The program management office received the first system security plan in OSCAL machine-readable format from a cloud service provider in May.

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Colin Kahl: US to Provide Nearly $3B in Additional Military Aid to Ukraine
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Colin Kahl: US to Provide Nearly $3B in Additional Military Aid to Ukraine

Colin Kahl, undersecretary for policy at the Department of Defense, said the U.S. government through DOD will provide $2.98 billion in additional military support through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to help the Eastern European country continue to defend itself against Russian invasion.

“Stepping back for a moment, the United States has now committed more than $13.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including $12.9 billion in the last six months,” Kahl said Wednesday during a press briefing.

Under the USAI package, he said the U.S. will procure military capabilities from the private sector instead of drawing out equipment from the department’s stocks.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement the military capabilities in the security assistance package to be delivered include National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems; 155mm artillery ammunition; 120mm mortar ammunition; and counter-artillery radars.

The Pentagon will also provide Ukraine with Puma unmanned aerial systems and related equipment for Scan Eagle UAS, Vampire counter-UAS, laser-guided rocket systems and funding for training, sustainment and maintenance.

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