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NGA Looks to Digitize Historical GEOINT Data
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NGA Looks to Digitize Historical GEOINT Data
NGA Looks to Digitize Historical GEOINT Data

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has selected an undisclosed company to prototype image scanning technology to support the agency’s efforts to digitize its geospatial mapping data, C4ISRnet reported Thursday.

Christy Monaco, chief ventures officer at the NGA’s Office of Ventures and Innovation, told the publication that it awarded an other transaction agreement to a small business that specializes in scanning technology.

NGA seeks to digitize its datasets including historical film-based images that may be used for the development of predictive analytics and automated target detection capabilities. The agency aims to complete digitization by 2030 before its historical films disintegrate.

According to Monaco, nontraditional acquisition approaches and partnerships with companies that don’t normally work with the government helps NGA drive a culture of innovation. Monaco, who also facilitates staff training on new procurement methods, said she seeks to help the NGA workforce “ better find new ways to think about the intelligence problems that they are working on in an unclassified way”.

NGA maintains over 170 million historical images from as far back as 1935.

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NASA Backs Research Efforts in Spaceflight-Based Agriculture Systems
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NASA Backs Research Efforts in Spaceflight-Based Agriculture Systems
NASA Backs Research Efforts in Spaceflight-Based Agriculture Systems

NASA tapped five scientists to build automated plant-spacing methods and optimized water and nutrient delivery technologies that will cultivate crops during spaceflight. The scientists employed approaches in engineering and space biology science to create projects that will develop, assess and validate concepts for water and nutrient delivery subsystems, the agency said Friday.

They will also explore and test methods that could modify the spacing between growing crops and allow studies within cramped areas in a spacecraft. NASA will fund the projects through cooperative agreements and will be awarded $1.1 million from fiscal years 2020 to 2021 funds upon their implementation.

Click here to view the list of selected projects.

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Coast Guard Unveils IT Transformation Strategy; Adm. Karl Schultz Quoted
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Coast Guard Unveils IT Transformation Strategy; Adm. Karl Schultz Quoted
Karl Schultz
Karl Schultz

The U.S. Coast Guard plans to transform the way it manages data and has unveiled a strategy to pursue that goal, National Defense Magazine reported Thursday. The plan, titled the Tech Revolution Road Map, aims to have USCG's information technology updated and tailored for the modern era.

Adm. Karl Schultz, USCG commandant, said the service needs a reliable, integrated information system to support missions. USCG currently employs technology from the 1990s, he added. The strategy highlights goals for the service's decision-making data, collaborative software and cloud tools, cyber readiness and infrastructure for command, control, communications, computers, cyber and intelligence.

“This year we actually got funding in the budget to be able to work on some [command, control, communications, computers/information technology] enhancements,” Master Chief Jason Vanderhaden told National Defense Magazine.

Vanderhaden serves as USCG's senior enlisted member and principal advisor to the commandant. He added that the service will replace a large amount of hardware infrastructure.

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Census Bureau Looks to Create Enterprise Data Lake to Support Cloud, AI Deployment
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Census Bureau Looks to Create Enterprise Data Lake to Support Cloud, AI Deployment
Census Bureau Looks to Create Enterprise Data Lake to Support Cloud, AI Deployment

The Census Bureau is requesting $22.3 million in its fiscal year 2021 budget proposal to establish a data lake to handle 2020 census data and help implement emerging technologies, Federal Times reported Thursday. The bureau aims to integrate its 2020 census data lake with the new enterprise platform to accelerate research work and support policy-making efforts.

According to the budget documents, the new data lake will improve access to massive amounts of demographic and economic information while updating survey and administrative data processing through cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning and "big data" procedures.

"We will see some reduction in redundant data, while increasing the data that is useful to our mission,” said Kevin Smith, chief information officer of the Census Bureau. “Furthermore, the EDL will support the Census Bureau’s longstanding leadership in data analytics and technology. This includes accelerating data innovation, realizing benefits through standardization and using cloud and open source technology.”

The bureau plans to expand EDL to include third-party data in the next fiscal years.

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Mark Esper: DoD Must Prioritize Nuclear Triad Modernization
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Mark Esper: DoD Must Prioritize Nuclear Triad Modernization
Mark Esper
Mark Esper

Mark Esper, secretary of defense and 2020 Wash100 Award winner, emphasized the effort to update the U.S. strategic nuclear triad as part of the fiscal year 2021 defense budget request, DoD News reported Thursday. The Department of Defense requests $28.9 billion to modernize the country's nuclear defense, including the nuclear triad that consists of ground-launch missiles, bomber aircraft and submarine-launched missiles.

Secretary Esper visited Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to meet with officials and look at the site's nuclear assets. The 91st Missile Wing and the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot feature ground-launched nuclear missiles and B-52 bomber aircraft that are two of the three nuclear triad components.

"It provides that strategic nuclear deterrent that we depend on day after day — that we've depended on decade after decade," Esper said about the triad.

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GSA AI Center of Excellence Highlights Adoption to Address Challenges
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GSA AI Center of Excellence Highlights Adoption to Address Challenges
GSA AI Center of Excellence Highlights Adoption to Address Challenges

The General Services Administration's Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence works to help agencies leverage AI technologies. AI CoE adapts through obstacles and allows agencies to accelerate service deliveries, bolster workforce ability and cut down errors, GSA's Technology Transformation Services said in a blog post published Thursday.

GSA emphasizes the need to adapt through time and reach speeds necessary to thrive in a competitive environment. The AI-driven center uses machine learning, automation and other new technologies to keep pace with the evolving landscape of challenges.

Agencies receive AI CoE's help to tackle specific issues and improve public services via modernization.

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Trump Selects Richard Grenell for Acting DNI Post
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Trump Selects Richard Grenell for Acting DNI Post
Richard Grenell
Richard Grenell

Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, has been selected to serve as director of national intelligence on an acting basis.

President Trump announced Grenell’s selection in a Twitter post dated Feb. 20 and said that he has represented the U.S. “exceedingly well” in his current role. In August 2019, Trump picked Joseph Maguire, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, to take on the acting DNI role.

Prior to his most recent position, Grenell served as a partner at Los Angeles-based consulting firm Capitol Media Partners. He also served as a national security and foreign affairs spokesman for presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

Throughout his federal career, Grenell led communication strategy development and held spokesman roles for government leaders including former president George W. Bush.  He was also the longest-serving political appointee and U.S. spokesman at the U.N. with a tenure that lasted from 2001 to 2008.

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MITRE Evaluates Cybersecurity Products Based on Carbanak, FIN7 Groups to Address Threats to Financial Systems; Frank Duff, Quoted
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MITRE Evaluates Cybersecurity Products Based on Carbanak, FIN7 Groups to Address Threats to Financial Systems; Frank Duff, Quoted
MITRE Evaluates Cybersecurity Products Based on Carbanak, FIN7 Groups to Address Threats to Financial Systems; Frank Duff, Quoted

MITRE has announced new assessments of commercial cybersecurity products to protect software and technology against the threat posed by the hack groups commonly known as Carbanak and FIN7, the company reported on Friday. 

“During the previous evaluations, vendors would note when they believed a protection would have prevented the execution of specific evaluated behaviors. By extending the offering to include protections, the evaluations will be able to definitively say whether this was the case,” said Frank Duff, the ATT&CK Evaluations lead. 

The hacking groups, Carbanak and FIN7, have compromised financial service and hospitality organizations through the use of sophisticated malware and techniques. Over the past five years,  the groups have stolen more than $1 billion across hundreds of businesses.

MITRE’s ATT&CK, a knowledge base of adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures that is based on published threat reporting, has been used by cybersecurity experts within the finance, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, retail, and government sectors to detail adversary behavior and tradecraft.

The company’s current evaluation set will assess products’ detection rate of tactics and techniques used by the adversary groups. It will utilize curated methodology and output data to inform organizations as well as provide individual analysis and interpretation to prevent attacks. 

“We’ve heard from companies that have incorporated data from the first evaluations into their purchasing decisions that doing so has enabled them to make better informed decisions faster and at a far lower cost – up to 10 times less than they would have spent evaluating the products entirely on their own,” Duff said. “We’ve worked to make our results more self-explanatory, so that consumers can make decisions even more easily and effectively.”

The detection evaluations will be publicly released, giving the users and potential users of these tools clear insights into performance. This evaluation will also mark the first time that vendors can sign up for an optional extension to their detection evaluation that will exercise their protections related to ATT&CK techniques.

About MITRE

MITRE’s mission-driven teams are dedicated to solving problems for a safer world. Through our public-private partnerships and federally funded R&D centers, we work across government and in partnership with industry to tackle challenges to the safety, stability, and well-being of our nation.

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CyberX, Microsoft Azure Collaborate to Enhance Cybersecurity’ Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, Nir Giller Quoted 
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CyberX, Microsoft Azure Collaborate to Enhance Cybersecurity’ Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, Nir Giller Quoted 
CyberX, Microsoft Azure Collaborate to Enhance Cybersecurity’ Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, Nir Giller Quoted 

CyberX, an IoT security company, has collaborated with Microsoft Azure Security Center for IoT to develop a unified view of security across managed and unmanaged IoT devices, Microsoft announced on Friday. 

“CyberX’s IoT security platform and integration with the Microsoft Azure Security Center for IoT enables customers to go further and faster with IoT innovations that drive new revenue streams and operational efficiencies — without compromising on security,” said Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, chief technology officer (CTO) and general manager (GM) of Cloud and AI Security Division at Microsoft.

The companies will utilize the combination of CyberX’s agentless security platform and Microsoft Azure’s Security Center for IoT comprehensive IoT device protection and zero trust security to reduce risks, including enterprise IoT threats IoT, Smart Buildings and Smart Retail.

To reduce IoT security threats, the companies collaborative effort will discover and profile all IoT assets and communication to provide asset visibility as well as enable micro-segmentation policies. The technology will also detail a risk score with risk-based mitigation recommendations based on vulnerabilities detected.

In addition, CybeX and Microsoft will continuously monitor network traffic and generate real-time alerts when devices present unauthorized behavior. The companies have also integrated single pane-of-glass visibility of cyber risk for all managed and unmanaged IoT devices.

“IoT and cloud are driving the shift towards zero trust strategies that require a holistic understanding of what devices are connected and how they’re communicating, rather than on protecting a perimeter which no longer exists, so you can quickly detect and mitigate attacks before they impact your organization,” added Nir Giller, CyberX co-founder, chief technology officer and general manager of international operations.

About Microsoft 

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services.

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Raytheon Completes U.S. Army Air, Missile Defense Sensor to Defeat Advanced Threats; Tom Laliberty Quoted
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Raytheon Completes U.S. Army Air, Missile Defense Sensor to Defeat Advanced Threats; Tom Laliberty Quoted
Raytheon Completes U.S. Army Air, Missile Defense Sensor to Defeat Advanced Threats; Tom Laliberty Quoted

Raytheon has completed construction of the first radar antenna array for the U.S. Army’s  Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS), the company announced on Friday. The LTAMDS will help the service branch defeat advanced threats, including hypersonic weapons. 

"Raytheon's employees and partners are focused on delivering the first LTAMDS by the Army's Urgent Material Release date because we know how important expanded battlespace coverage and other capabilities are to the men and women in uniform," said Tom Laliberty, vice president of Integrated Air and Missile Defense at Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems business.

The LTAMDS are comparable to Raytheon’s Patriot radar array. The company will advance the missile to double its performance. After Raytheon tests the radar array, it will be mounted on a precision-machined enclosure for integration and further evaluation. 

The enclosure will utilize its advanced design to accelerate the manufacturing and to support the U.S. Army's Urgent Materiel Release program.

"Because we invested in cutting-edge radar technology and advanced manufacturing capability, we will meet the customer's critical milestones and get LTAMDS in the field rapidly," continued Laliberty.

Raytheon completed the work less than 120 days after securing the $384 million, firm-fixed price contract in Oct. 2019.  The Army used an “other transaction authority” procedure for the award covering delivery and test of six Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor prototypes over a three-year period.

The company submitted its LTAMDS proposal in July and said its proposed system employs a gallium nitride-based active electronically scanned array radar.

Raytheon worked with six technology suppliers as part of its contract pursuit, including Crane Aerospace & Electronics, Cummings Aerospace, IERUS Technologies, Kord Technologies, Mercury Systems and nLogic.

About Raytheon

Raytheon Company, with 2019 sales of $29 billion and 70,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 98 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I® products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.

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