Weekly Wrap-Up
Week of July 12, 2021
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SENATE CONFIRMS FORMER WHITE HOUSE, NSA OFFICIAL JEN EASTERLY AS CISA DIRECTOR AFTER DELAY
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(CyberScoop) Seven months into Joe Biden’s presidency, an administration confronting several cybersecurity crises finally has a permanent director en route to take over one of the top few cyber posts in the federal government.
Once she’s sworn in, Easterly — the departing head of Morgan Stanley’s Fusion Resilience Center and a former White House and National Security Agency official — will be busy with the aftermath of a spree of ransomware attacks that have attracted the attention of policymakers like none before. They include incidents at fuel supplier Colonial Pipeline, meat processor JBS and software company Kaseya, where a compromise opened the door for attackers to claim perhaps thousands of victims.
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Bipartisan Calls to Regulate Facial Recognition Tech Grow Louder
(Nextgov) Democrats and Republicans on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security expressed concerns in a hearing Tuesday on the increased use of facial recognition by the federal government and law enforcement.
The hearing included testimony from a variety of witnesses, including legal experts and researchers, federal officials and a Michigan man who was wrongfully arrested by Detroit police after being misidentified by facial recognition software.
Subcommittee chair Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said Congress “should be engaged in oversight and legislative response” to facial recognition and biometric technologies. Despite political differences, Jackson’s words were echoed by the subcommittee’s ranking member, Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and Ohio Republican Jim Jordan.
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Why the Pentagon's JEDI Cloud Contract Wasn't a Total Loss
But it surprised few in the government contracting community that JEDI’s days were numbered. Even when JEDI was conceived in 2017, few enterprises were locking into single cloud solutions, and some experts argue that JEDI was dead—or close to dead—on arrival.
“It struck me that at the time … that maybe this … was overcome by events,” Stan Soloway, chief executive of Celero Strategies and a former DOD acquisition official, said in an interview with Nextgov.
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Billions in AI Investments and a New Deterrence Strategy Coming Soon, SecDef Says
(Nextgov) Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin teased a new vision for deterring adversaries and announced a $1.5 billion commitment to the Pentagon’s artificial intelligence hub over the next five years.
At a summit event Tuesday hosted by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which released its final report last March that found the U.S. is unprepared for AI competition with China, Austin said preventing conflict requires a new vision. That vision, he said, is called integrated deterrence.
“I’ll have more to say about this in the weeks to come, but basically, integrated deterrence is about using the right mix of technology, operational concepts, and capabilities—all woven together in a networked way that is so credible, and flexible, and formidable that it will give any adversary pause,” Austin said.
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Intelligent Innovations Group Awarded a Spot on the Defense Intelligence Agency's SITE III Contract
For this enterprise IT contract, IIG will deliver a wide range of IT services and capabilities to support intelligence needs for DIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) who also can award work under this contract.
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Aveshka, Inc. is Awarded Subcontract with the Data, Analytics, and Visualization Task Force of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
(Cision PR Newswire) Aveshka, a trusted provider of data analytics capabilities and subject matter expertise in the public health realm, was recently awarded a subcontract with the Data, Analytics, and Visualization Task Force (DAVTF) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Aveshka is serving as a subcontractor to Booz Allen Hamilton on this program.
Under this contract, Aveshka will continue its integral work in supporting the nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Aveshka currently supports agencies to include Departments of Justice, Defense, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security; as well as federal financial agencies, state and local agencies, and numerous commercial clients on pandemic response. Aveshka's health scientists and scientific data analysts will support the DAVTF in its objective to identify, track, and monitor COVID-19 cases and its spread and containment.
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