The Defense Department is pushing full speed ahead on modernization efforts, with recent strides made on a $28 billion R&D project, a $10 billion cloud infrastructure proposed contract, efforts to move cyber defense infrastructure to the cloud, along with myriad advanced research and futuristic projects. They’re even working to overhaul their travel planning system. Call it AirDoD, perhaps? […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) has hired Michael Conlin as its first chief data officer (CDO). According to his LinkedIn profile, Conlin started in his new position in July. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) announced the selection of SAP Concur for a $9.3 million contract to develop a new system to replace the current Defense Travel System. […]
The Defense Department announced Tuesday that it awarded 15 companies the right to compete for task orders in a potential nine-year, $28 billion technology research and development contract for its Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). […]
The Army needs help from academia and the private sector to modernize its workflow, explained Maj. Gen. Garrett Yee, acting deputy CIO for the U.S. Army, during an Avaya webinar today. Yee specifically stressed an interest in industry helping to make the Army’s workflows interoperable and said that “workflows at the installation level must be scalable” to achieve true modernization. […]
The Pentagon is moving to protect its personnel from unintentionally advertising when they’re in an operational, and possibly secret, location. The new policy is a response to the revelation in January that a global heat map posted by fitness tracking company Strava could be used to identify the locations and activities of military personnel, even down to individuals, at military outposts around the world or in high-security areas such as the National Security Agency. […]
Stacey Dixon will be the next director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). […]
The idea that you can’t trust everything you see on the Internet is a conventional, if sporadically followed, wisdom. But as hackers become increasingly skilled and sneaky, as “fake news” officially enters the dictionary, and as fake video and fake audio become more of a thing, you might not necessarily be paranoid to wonder if you can trust anything. […]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) welcomed several new faces to cybersecurity and IT leadership positions on Monday, as FBI Director Christopher Wray announced four appointments to leadership positions. […]
The National Security Agency published a news feature today that provides a new, NSA-developed resource for organizations looking to promote the well-being of their cybersecurity personnel. Dr. Celeste Lyn-Paul, senior researcher and technical advisor at NSA Research, and Dr. Josiah Dykstra, deputy technical director of NSA Cybersecurity Operations, developed the Cyber Operations Stress Survey (COSS) to help gauge stress levels of security personnel in high-risk environments. […]
The Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded to TekSynap, a small business based in Reston, Va., a $435 million contract for enterprise IT services and support for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). […]
MITRE, a manager of Federally-funded research and development centers targeting Federal defense, intelligence, and cybersecurity functions, recommended in a new report released today that the Defense Department (DoD) undertake a sweeping menu of actions to improve military supply chain security, and warned that maintaining the status quo of current security policy may have ruinous consequences. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
President Trump today signed into law the FY 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which clocks in at $717 billion in spending for the Pentagon. After months of negotiations, hearings, and compromises, the must-pass defense spending bill was signed during a visit by President Trump to Fort Drum in upstate New York this afternoon. […]
Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan announced Thursday that the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) will undergo a re-branding. The unit will drop “experimental” from its name and will be called Defense Innovation Unit, or DIU. […]
Vice President Pence said today that the Trump administration and the Defense Department are preparing to move forward with detailed plans to establish a new United States Space Command as a unified combatant command, and if Congress approves, as a separate branch of the military–dubbed the U.S. Space Force – equal to and separate from the existing five branches. […]
The U.S. Cyber Command (Cybercom) and the National Security Agency have joined the effort to protect the integrity of this year’s midterm elections, which are occurring under the shadow of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that 2018 is seeing more of the same. […]
The Pentagon is looking to get into the weeds with cyber defense, using artificial intelligence to hunt down attacks that may use the size and complexity of its systems to hide out while waiting to strike. […]
Wayne Belk, director of the National Insider Threat Task Force (NITTF), said today at an event hosted by Nextgov and Equifax that his unit in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is now working with the Defense Department to clarify and strengthen the roles of the Federal government’s insider threat staff, beginning with its security analysts. […]
Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said today that the billions of dollars the U.S. government and private sector spend each year on cybersecurity are not being properly and efficiently utilized unless government and industry wrap human resources departments tightly into security discussions. […]
Charles Phalen, director of the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB), said today at an event hosted by NextGov and Equifax that he supports a proposal in the President’s government reform and reorganization plan to move NBIB “in its entirety from the Office of Personnel Management into the Department of Defense.” […]
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) announced yesterday the appointment of Air Force Colonel Bradley Barnhart as the new chief of staff at DISA. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
The Department of Defense is getting on board with some critical website and email protections that have been mandated across civilian Federal government agencies, even if it is lagging somewhat behind other departments in applying encryption and anti-phishing measures. […]
Welcome to MeriTalk News Briefs, where we bring you all the day’s action that didn’t quite make the headlines. No need to shout about ‘em, but we do feel that they merit talk. […]
Federal IT leaders discussed the ways their organizations are tackling the proliferation of more and more endpoints on Federal networks at MeriTalk’s Cyber Security Brainstorm Thursday. In particular, ever-increasing mobile connectivity is creating the potential for further headaches, but the officials advised that next-gen technologies and proper network and data governance provide avenues to expand the ways employees work without compromising security at the network edge. […]
By a vote of 87-10, the Senate today approved the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the corresponding conference report that ironed out differences between House and Senate versions of the bill. The legislation to fund the Defense Department (DoD) and U.S. armed forces now moves to President Trump’s desk for his signature. […]
The Pentagon is looking to get on top of the next wave of artificial intelligence technologies through a fast-track contracting program that would bring new concepts from the drawing board to proof-of-concept within 18 months. […]
Panelists at MeriTalk’s Cyber Security Brainstorm on Thursday will shed light on a host of vital cybersecurity issues, including threats to control systems, the foundational importance of security to IT modernization efforts, and the keys to success in risk-based security practices, according to a sneak peek into the thinking of just a few of the 25 experts scheduled to speak. […]
Booz Allen Hamilton has won an $885 million task order to provide artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning support to the U.S. Government Program Office, for use by the Defense Department (DoD), the company announced Monday. […]