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Army Migration to New Microsoft 365 Cloud Email Environment Now 50 Percent Complete; Lt. Gen. John Morrison Comments
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Army Migration to New Microsoft 365 Cloud Email Environment Now 50 Percent Complete; Lt. Gen. John Morrison Comments

Officials from the U.S. Army have revealed that more than half of the service’s email accounts already migrated to a new Microsoft Office 365 cloud environment ahead of schedule, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. John Morrison, Army deputy chief of staff for cyber, told media that the service expects to finish transferring 60 percent of its total accounts or more to the Army 365 system by the end of 2022.

However, Morrison conceded that the service could not complete moving all Army personnel away from the Defense Enterprise Email (DEE) system and into A365 by the March deadline. “The transition off of DEE has always been condition-based,” he explained.

Access to A365 provides Army soldiers, civilians and contractors with cloud-native email tools, storage and collaboration technology.

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Navy Commemorates Facility Work at Port Hueneme for Unmanned Vehicle Prototype Testing; Capt. Pete Small Quoted
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Navy Commemorates Facility Work at Port Hueneme for Unmanned Vehicle Prototype Testing; Capt. Pete Small Quoted

The U.S. Navy recently held a ceremony to mark the completion of facility modifications and the start of building construction work for the testing, evaluation and demonstration of unmanned vehicle prototypes at Naval Base Ventura County Port Hueneme in California.

The Naval Sea Systems Command said Tuesday extra-large unmanned undersea vehicles will reside at Port Hueneme’s modified littoral combat ship support facility while unmanned surface vessels will be operated and maintained from a new modular administrative building.

According to the organization, the site’s open-water ranges, expeditionary transportation capabilities, close distance to naval and industry hubs and relationship with tenant commands makes it ideal to host unmanned vehicle testing.

“These facilities will be the focal point of Navy learning and experimentation on the capabilities, operations and sustainment of Unmanned Maritime Vehicle prototypes to inform future programs,” explained Capt. Pete Small, program manager for unmanned maritime systems.

The Navy is planning to send five Orca XLUUV prototypes, one Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle, two Sea Hunter USVs and four Overlord USVs to NBVC in the future.

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NIST Releases AI Risk Management Framework Concept Paper for Public Consultation
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NIST Releases AI Risk Management Framework Concept Paper for Public Consultation

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking comments from the public on a concept paper for the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework, which is aimed at addressing risks in the design, development and use of AI systems.

The concept paper describes the fundamental approach proposed for the framework and incorporates feedback gathered from a request for information released in July and discussions from a workshop held in October, NIST said Tuesday.

According to the paper, the structure for the AI RMF is similar to the guidelines used in the development of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and the Privacy Framework.

The agency wants input on the approach and suggestions about details and specific topics reviewers would like to see in the first draft of the framework, which NIST expects to release in early 2022 for public consultation.

“The framework aims to foster the development of innovative approaches to address characteristics of trustworthiness including accuracy, explainability and interpretability, reliability, privacy, robustness, safety, security (resilience), and mitigation of unintended and/or harmful bias, as well as of harmful uses,” according to the previous RFI published in the Federal Register.

NIST plans to unveil the first version of the framework in early 2023. 

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House, Senate OK Measure to Raise Borrowing Limit by $2.5T
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House, Senate OK Measure to Raise Borrowing Limit by $2.5T

Congress prevented a debt default by approving a measure that would increase the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion, CNBC reported Wednesday. The House voted 221-209 early Wednesday to pass the measure.

The lower chamber’s decision came hours after the Senate approved the bill in a 50-49 vote. Senate leadership reached a deal on the debt ceiling, allowing lawmakers to raise the borrowing limit without requiring 60 votes to clear a filibuster, according to a report by Vox.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the legislation will raise the borrowing cap “to a level commensurate with funding necessary to get into 2023.”

Increasing the debt ceiling will allow the Department of the Treasury to continue to pay off the government’s bills.

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Alex Stamos Calls for Executive Order on Basic Security Functions in Cloud Offerings
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Alex Stamos Calls for Executive Order on Basic Security Functions in Cloud Offerings

Alex Stamos, partner at the Krebs Stamos Group and a federal advisory committee member at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said he believes basic security functions should not be sold as add-ons by cloud service providers and that such features should be addressed through an executive order.

“You should not have to pay extra for security, I’m sorry, that is immoral for companies [to charge for],” said Stamos.

“I’d love to see an executive order that any cloud product that is bought by a federal agency has to support [multi factor authentication], [single sign on] and basic audit in the most base paid package.”

Stamos, who is also director of Stanford Internet Observatory, raised concerns among CSPs charging for MFA, SSO and other baseline security features through an enterprise license.

“Give it to everybody who’s paying five bucks a month or 10 bucks a month for your product, do not charge 20 or 30 or $50 a month to get the basic security functions,” he said. “It’s just a completely unethical thing. For big businesses to hold up small businesses, ‘can’t be secure unless you pay me more money,’ just really pisses me off, to be frank.”

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NSF Seeks Ideas for Convergence Accelerator Research Topics
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NSF Seeks Ideas for Convergence Accelerator Research Topics

The National Science Foundation has asked interested stakeholders to submit potential research topics that could help address existing and future societal and national challenges as part of the Convergence Accelerator program.

The topic ideas should be broad in technical scope and impactful to society at scale, should build on foundational research and are suitable for a multidisciplinary, convergent research approach, according to a notice posted Tuesday.

NSF will fund the selected ideas into community workshops, which intend to further develop concepts to integrate convergence research and foster collaboration among stakeholders from government, industry, academia, nonprofit and other communities of practice.

The workshops’ findings will inform NSF’s efforts in creating the “final convergence research track topics to be funded in future years,” the notice reads.

NSF will hold informational webinars on the Convergence Accelerator program on Jan. 20th and Jan. 25th. Responses to the call for ideas are due Feb. 28th.

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Kevin Kelly Named Chairman, CEO of Arcfield
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Kevin Kelly Named Chairman, CEO of Arcfield

Arcfield, the new company name of CTFV Acquisition Corp. (CTFV), announced on Tuesday that Kevin Kelly, a 30-year defense and intelligence leader, has been named the company’s new chairman and CEO.

“I am excited to take the helm at such an important time and am focused on driving growth through innovation,” said Kelly. “We look forward to continuing this critical work in support of national security initiatives.”

Prior to his new role with Arcfield, Kelly served as president of the National Security and Innovative Solutions sector for CACI International. In addition, he also worked with LGS Innovations for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, including chief strategy officer, chief operations officer, and eventually CEO.

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DARPA Concludes Competition to Predict Ocean Float Destinations; John Waterston Quoted
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DARPA Concludes Competition to Predict Ocean Float Destinations; John Waterston Quoted

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held a challenge to develop algorithms for predicting where an object floating on the ocean will travel based on environmental factors.

DARPA said Monday that its Forecasting Floats in Turbulence challenge studied how the convergence between the ocean’s currents, waves and winds affects floating objects.

The challenge supports the larger Ocean of Things program, which delivers maritime situational awareness via low-cost distributed drifters on the water.

Thirty-two participants proposed algorithms and other approaches to determine where 90 basketball-sized Sofar Spotter drifters would move over a span of 10 days in the Atlantic. The algorithms build on data on the drifters’ GPS coordinates from the past 20 days before the challenge.

Second Sight Predictions won $25,000 as the competition’s first-placer. Deltares won $15,000 as the second-placer and the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies received $10,000 for landing third place.

“The challenge has shown that we’ve just scratched the surface in understanding the complex turbulence at the convergence of air and sea, and we hope to spur further research into making models more accurate,” said John Waterston, who manages the Ocean of Things program from DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office.

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Senate Appropriations Committee Staff Erik Raven Nominated as Navy Undersecretary
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Senate Appropriations Committee Staff Erik Raven Nominated as Navy Undersecretary

President Biden intends to nominate Erik Raven, the majority clerk of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, to serve as undersecretary of the Navy.

Raven, who has been serving as a staffer at the Senate Appropriations Committee since 2007, manages more than $700 billion of annual spending by the U.S. military and the intelligence community, the White House said Monday.

If confirmed by the Senate, Raven would be the first to serve as the permanent Navy undersecretary since Thomas Modly left the Department of Defense in April 2020.

According to a report, several DOD civilian officials have taken on the responsibilities of the military branch’s second most senior civilian role on an acting basis, but none were nominated or confirmed for the position.

Biden also announced plans to nominate Kristyn Jones, a managing director at the federal advisory practice of consulting firm KPMG, to become the Air Force comptroller and Ventris Gibson, acting director of the U.S. Mint at the Department of the Treasury, as permanent head of the bureau.

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NATO to Solicit Cryptographic Situational Awareness Capability
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NATO to Solicit Cryptographic Situational Awareness Capability

The NATO Communications and Information Agency plans to solicit proposals for a cryptographic situational awareness capability (CSAC), with the Department of Commerce serving as the U.S. liaison for the future solicitation.

The NCI Agency will use the CSAC technology to address NATO’s cryptography-related needs and support information management processes, the Commerce Department said Monday in a SAM.gov notice.

NATO intends to launch a 60-day invitation for bids within the second quarter of 2022, and have the single firm-fixed price contract awarded in 2023’s first quarter.

Interested parties will need the U.S. government’s approval first before applying for the NATO contract. They may request a declaration of eligibility from the government through Jan. 25.

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