Quick Hits

*** On Friday, the Government Accountability Office denied protests filed by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin and Leidos-owned Dynetics, Inc. about their loss in a NASA procurement made in connection with a broad agency announcement seeking a lunar landing system to bring astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won the award with a bid of $2.9 billion. The protestors argued that the NASA broad agency announcement was meant to result in multiple awards.

*** A National Security Agency document released Thursday details some of the bad things that can happen when teleworking via public Wi-fi networks. The message from NSA: don't do it, but if you have to then use a personal or corporate virtual private network and confine your browsing to sites secured with the HTTPS protocol.

*** As of July 29, the House of Representatives has passed nine of 12 annual appropriations bills, including the Financial Services and General Government bill. The legislation doesn't specify a pay raise for federal employees, which clears the path for the 2.7% raise called for in the Biden administration's budget proposal.