FCW Insider: Sept. 18
Today's top stories, upcoming events and other observations from FCW's reporters and editors.
The U.S. Air Force is considering standing up a rapid capabilities office for cybersecurity to streamline acquisitions and build cross-functional teams, defense reporter Lauren C. Williams learned at the Air Force Association's Air Space Cyber conference. An RCO helped drive the development of the B-21 stealth bomber, and last year Congress authorized another for space that remains a work in progress.
The Census Bureau bumped its lifecycle cost estimate for the 2020 count to $15.6 billion last year -- more than $3 billion more than initially projected. But according to the Government Accountability Office, the reliability of that estimate is in question. Chase Gunter has more.
The Federal Aviation Administration pushed out a tech solution nationwide that allows commercial drone operators to file flight plans to access restricted airspace in real time. The FAA announced the completion of the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability after a phased rollout. Mark Rockwell has the story.
Who's responsible for designing and executing an insider threat program? According to Raytheon CTO Michael Daly, tech and human resources executives must collaborate to prevent internal security risks from going undetected.
Quick hits
Critical data across the 29 components at the Department of Health and Human Services is too often siloed and there are technical, legal and cultural barriers to sharing across organizations, according to an internal HHS report on data sharing from the agency's CTO.
GAO is crafting a report on cybersecurity risks in the IT supply chain for the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee. Legislators in the House also want a look at the report when it's ready.
The Department of Veterans Affairs announced on FedBizOpps that its 5-year contract to maintain the homegrown Vista electronic health record system will go up for bid by Sept. 21. VA is tapping the General Services Administration's Schedule 70 vehicle to bid out the work. Vista is being phased out gradually as VA plans to adopt Cerner's commercial health record software to achieve interoperability with the electronic health record system being implemented at the Department of Defense. "Gradually" is an important adjective, though: Vista has at least 10 years of service left before the VA is fully migrated to the commercial system.
Is it time to break up Amazon? In an investment note, Citi Research advised clients that a split of the $1 trillion company into retail and cloud computing made sense from both a financial and a regulatory point of view. According to an article on CNBC, the cloud computing arm would be the richer of the two, with Amazon Web Services predicted to launch with a $600 billion valuation. The Citi note comes as Amazon vies for a controversial $10 billion single-award contract to put the Department of Defense's warfighting tech into the cloud.
The Department of Homeland Security announced $11.5 million in funding to companies looking to identify large-scale disruptions to internet networks and to attribute the actors behind those disruptions. The awards were made under the Predict, Assess Risk, Identify (and Mitigate) Disruptive Internet-scale Network Events (PARIDINE) research project at the Science & Technology Directorate at DHS. The project includes identification of disruptions and attribution to specific bad actors. The Federal Communications Commission and the Office of Emergency Communication at the National Protection and Programs Directorate have been identified by S&T as possible customers for the tools under development.