Phillip Washington Nominated for FAA Administrator Role
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Phillip Washington Nominated for FAA Administrator Role

Phillip Washington, CEO of Denver International Airport and U.S. Army veteran, will be nominated by President Joe Biden to assume the administrator position at the Federal Aviation Administration.

According to a White House notice released on Wednesday, Washington was with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority before he was confirmed as CEO of DIA.

As Metro chief executive, he was responsible for the management of its over $8 billion budget and 11,000 employees. He held the post for approximately six years.

Washington’s career also includes time with the Denver Regional Transportation District and over two-decade of service with the Army.

If confirmed, Washington will take over Billy Nolen, who has been serving as acting FAA administrator since April. Nolen was appointed after Steve Dickson stepped down at the end of March.

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Mark Livingston Named DCSA Assistant Director of Personnel Security
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Mark Livingston Named DCSA Assistant Director of Personnel Security

Mark Livingston, a four-decade government service veteran, took on a new role as assistant director of personnel security at the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.

He will lead efforts to sustain, transform and integrate security practices for the agency’s workforce, DCSA said Wednesday in a LinkedIn post.

Livingston previously served as assistant deputy for manpower, personnel, training and education at the U.S. Navy, lead for the Department of the Navy Security Enterprise and the service branch’s acting deputy undersecretary for intelligence and security.

The former U.S. Marine also worked at the Transportation Security Agency’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis as deputy assistant administrator and at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as senior reactor specialist.

Earlier in his career, Livingston served as director of corporate intelligence programs for Northrop Grumman.

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DHS S&T, Army Announce New Chemical Security Laboratory in Maryland; Kathryn Coulter Mitchell Quoted
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DHS S&T, Army Announce New Chemical Security Laboratory in Maryland; Kathryn Coulter Mitchell Quoted

The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate has partnered with the U.S. Army to open a new chemical security laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

The experimental facility will support the Chemical Security Analysis Center’s risk and consequence models and contribute critical scientific data to current and emerging S&T projects, DHS said Wednesday.

The  Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center will bring its expertise in the areas of chemical threat agents, chemical defense, and toxic industrial chemicals to come up with findings critical to national readiness.

“Having the ability to conduct our own experimental laboratory research alongside our Army partners brings a more holistic approach to our chemical security analytics and allows us to model analyses rapidly in support of DHS components and other federal, state and local partners with greater precision,” said Kathryn Coulter Mitchell, DHS senior official performing the duties of the undersecretary for science and technology.

DHS S&T and the Army also expect the facility’s location would improve its capability and return on investment.

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GSA Customer Experience Center of Excellence Unveils CX Maturity Model
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GSA Customer Experience Center of Excellence Unveils CX Maturity Model

The General Services Administration’s Customer Experience Center of Excellence has unveiled a framework for transforming the delivery of federal services to citizens.

The CX CoE Maturity Model does not constitute official guidance but is designed to help organizations gain a deeper understanding of how to measure their level of capacity to design and deliver federal services.

The framework outlines five levels of CX maturity: reactive, tactical, strategic, foundational and customer-centric.

“The levels are a progression towards an ideal state. Each level requires the full realization of the levels below it,” the framework states.

The CX CoE Maturity Model is in response to an executive order signed by President Biden in December to enhance customer experience and service delivery. The order outlines 36 customer experience improvement commitments across 17 agencies to organize the delivery of federal services.

“Our government must recommit to being ‘of the people, by the people, [and] for the people’ in order to solve the complex 21st century challenges our nation faces. Government must be held accountable for designing and delivering services with a focus on the actual experience of the people whom it is meant to serve,” the executive order states.

The CX CoE noted that the Maturity Model does not represent or constitute official guidance.

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OSTP Requests Input on Cislunar Space Tech Strategy Development
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OSTP Requests Input on Cislunar Space Tech Strategy Development

The White House Office of Science and Technology wants the public’s input on what research and development priorities and possible technical standards the government should incorporate into a strategic plan for advancing cislunar ecosystem development efforts.

OSTP said Wednesday in a Federal Register notice it will accept ideas from both individuals and institutions to help create a national science and technology strategy for government activities in the region between Earth and the moon.

Specifically, the agency seeks to determine key R&D and technical approaches toward a sustainable ecosystem in cislunar space over the next 10 to 50 years.

Responses to the RFI notice are due July 20.

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CISA, FBI, Treasury Issue Advisory on North Korea’s Use of Maui Ransomware
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CISA, FBI, Treasury Issue Advisory on North Korea’s Use of Maui Ransomware

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, FBI and the Department of the Treasury have released a joint advisory on Maui ransomware and other indicators of compromise that North Korea-backed threat actors have been using since May 2021 to compromise health care and public health sector organizations.

Cyberthreat actors use Maui ransomware to encrypt servers used to support electronic health records, imaging, diagnostics and intranet services, according to the joint advisory published Wednesday.

Maui encrypts target files using a combination of XOR encryption, RSA and Advanced Encryption Standard.

The advisory outlines mitigation measures health care organizations should take, such as limiting access to data by fielding public key infrastructure and digital certificates to authenticate connections with the network, EHR system and medical devices, using standard user accounts on internal systems and turning off network device management interfaces.

Organizations are also being urged to maintain offline backups of data; create and exercise a cyber incident response plan and related communications plan; install updates for software, operating systems and firmware upon release; implement user training program and phishing exercises; and require multifactor authentication for services.

“The FBI, CISA, and Treasury strongly discourage paying ransoms as doing so does not guarantee files and records will be recovered and may pose sanctions risks,” the notice reads.

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White House Memo Outlines Measures to Meet FY22 Small Disadvantaged Business Goal
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White House Memo Outlines Measures to Meet FY22 Small Disadvantaged Business Goal

The Biden administration has issued a memorandum outlining the steps agency acquisition officers can take to meet the fiscal year 2022 goal of awarding 11 percent of total contract dollars to small disadvantaged businesses. 

The memo calls on agencies to use existing and open market contracts to achieve a mix of new entrant and seasoned 8(a) businesses and SDBs, evaluate acquisitions under the simplified acquisition threshold and maximize the use of the 8(a) business development program, the White House said in a June 29 release.

Agencies should review the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) no-contracts list of eligible firms, work with an 8(a) contractor for a construction project, consider software development requirements that might be suitable for the 8(a) program and take advantage of the General Services Administration’s 8(a) STARS III governmentwide acquisition contract. 

According to the document, the 8(a) STARS III GWAC provides agencies access to more than 1,100 8(a) contractors offering a range of information technology services, including artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, cybersecurity, quantum computing and blockchain technology.

The administration said the contract has supported more than $15 billion in agency orders to SDBs over the last decade.

The memo also urges agencies to maximize opportunities for SDBs when using GSA’s Federal Supply Schedule program and use the category management Quick Decision Dashboard and the Small Business Dashboard to immediately identify the existing contracts that offer access to SDBs.

Lesley Field, acting administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget, signed the memo with Bibi Hidalgo, associate administrator for government contracting and business development at SBA; Farooq Mitha, director of the office of small business programs at the Department of Defense; and Miguel Estien, acting national director of the Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency.

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DOD OIG Surveys Impact Level 5 Cloud Service Offerings
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DOD OIG Surveys Impact Level 5 Cloud Service Offerings

The Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General wants to know the availability of commercial cloud services that are certified to store and process controlled unclassified information.

A sources sought notice posted Tuesday on SAM.gov says the OIG is interested in learning about the advantages of migrating key applications to a cloud environment in terms of security, cost, agility and scalability.

Specifically, the office is eyeing a cloud service offering that can handle Impact Level 5 DOD information and connect to the department’s Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network.

Vendors responding to the request for information should describe their capacity to help the OIG safeguard information and isolate the office from other cloud tenants.

RFI responses are due July 19th.

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FBI Director Christopher Wray, UK Counterpart Warn of Chinese Threat to Western Tech
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FBI Director Christopher Wray, UK Counterpart Warn of Chinese Threat to Western Tech

FBI Director Christopher Wray and Ken McCallum, director-general of the U.K. security service MI5, have warned business leaders of China’s use of large-scale hacking and global network of intelligence agents to steal intellectual property of Western technology companies, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

“The Chinese government is set on stealing your technology—whatever it is that makes your industry tick—and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market,” Wray told business executives in London Wednesday. “They’re set on using every tool at their disposal to do it.”

Wray also expressed skepticism about commercial transactions with Chinese partners and said that business leaders should assess the risk of such interactions.

“Maintaining a technological edge may do more to increase a company’s value than would partnering with a Chinese company to sell into that huge Chinese market, only to find the Chinese government and your partner stealing and copying your innovation,” he said.

The U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center on Wednesday released a notice warning local and state government officials and business leaders about China’s use of overt and covert approaches to influence U.S. policymaking processes.

Some of the tactics China uses to influence policymaking are open lobbying, trade and investments to punish or reward officials and collection of personal data of state and local government leaders.

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Netskope Brings on Network Visionary Group to Guide Users Through SASE Adoption; Joe DePalo Quoted
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Netskope Brings on Network Visionary Group to Guide Users Through SASE Adoption; Joe DePalo Quoted

Cybersecurity software company Netskope has introduced a company faction responsible for advising on issues of security and how shifts in network, applications and data affect infrastructure functionality.

The group, called the Netskope Network Visionaries, will include Elaine Feeney and Alan Hannan and is intended to guide the many organizations who now conduct much of their business and store the majority of their data in the cloud, assisting with the embrace of a secure access service edge system, Netskope said Wednesday.

Joe DePalo, senior vice president in the platform engineering division at Netskope, described how the company has moved from just offering security programs to providing a comprehensive SASE approach and cloud storage through its Netskope NewEdge platform.

The executive also stressed Netskope’s purported ability to balance running a secure architecture on the edge “without sacrificing network performance.”

The Netskope Network Visionaries team is set to help Netskope make good on its over $100 million investment in NewEdge, encouraging and supporting users in the adoption of edge computing, network peering and network overhauls.

They will also ensure that users are maintaining informed cyber behaviors with regard to zero trust and SASE implementation and the group will play a role in contributing to Netskope’s strategic direction, keeping it in lock-step with the organization’s product roll-out and technological requirements.

Feeney is currently a retired tech industry veteran who has worked for Sun Microsystems, Accenture, Citibank and MCI. She holds advisory roles at PointOne Development Corp and is a board trustee for Colorado at the Nature Conservancy. Her last major position was vice president of infrastructure global expansion at Amazon Web Services.

Hannan brings experience in public and private cloud networking, Internet path optimization and backbone ISP, among other networking subject matters. Presently, Hannan is an advisor at Crowdstrike, where he also worked as vice president of technical operations and engineering. The executive additionally served in roles at UUNET, Global Crossing, Aruba Networks and Internap Network Services.

Netskope’s NewEdge full-compute data centers are located in over 50 regions across the globe and are aimed to eliminate latency and enable high performance for the company’s security and SASE platforms.

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