The Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) held its annual conference this week, so our roundup looks at news from that event and other trending topics in the Government Tech Media:
News From AUSA
The top defense tech media outlets, as well as many of the more broadly-focused government tech reporters, converged this week at the AUSA Conference in Washington, D.C. There was a lot of heavy hardware on display and a fair amount of focus on ongoing tech trends like AI and cybersecurity:
- Tom Temin of Federal News Network was on-site at the conference and interviewed Young Bang, the Army’s Principal deputy assistant of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, who discussed the service’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program and its digital transformation efforts.
- Army deputy assistant secretary for software Jennifer Swanson spoke to attendees about the service’s “massive and much-debated” software development contract scheduled for next month, as reported by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. in Breaking Defense. Freedberg also published an article on an announcement at the conference by Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo on a new secure online enclave where small businesses can work with sensitive information under the Army’s protection.
- Breaking Defense’s Carley Welch also wrote about comments by Camarillo at AUSA on increasing competition among vendors working to help the service field next-generation command and control tech. In addition, Welch reported on the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command’s urgent efforts to “transform IT and cyber ops by the end of next year.” Welch also covered comments by Army Program Executive Office leaders for cybersecurity and networking on the service’s reshuffling of its bureaucracy to become more efficient in those areas. For a gallery of AUSA photos and videos from Breaking Defense, look here.
- Mark Pomerleau of DefenseScoop had the story from the conference on a new Army Cyber Command unit “primarily focused on global threats that U.S. forces are facing in the information space.” Pomerleau also covered a conference presentation on how the Army is prioritizing efforts to apply AI to the task of analyzing the vast amounts of data the service collects from a variety of platforms.
- Gen. Gary Brito, head of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, spoke to Defense News’ Todd South at the conference about how the service is using generative AI to improve productivity and operational readiness. You can find Defense News’ overall recap of the conference here.
- Lauren C. Williams of Defense One reported from AUSA that the Army is making strides toward the goal of simplifying its tactical networks but isn’t quite there yet.
Mixed News on Cybersecurity
The news this week around cybersecurity included updates on actions taken by agencies to strengthen protection as well as recent research programs that call on the government and industry to do even more.
- Cate Burgan from MeriTalk reported that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) approved recommendations from a CISA advisory panel for bolstering critical infrastructure resilience in the face of cyberthreats from China.
- The new director of the General Services Administration’s FedRAMP cloud security assessment program has “a slew of changes” planned, detailed in Caroline Nihill’s article in FedScoop. Along those lines, Jane Edwards reported in ExecutiveGov on a new FedRAMP help center.
- David DiMolfetta of Nextgov/FCW had the news that the FBI arrested a man responsible for hacking the Security and Exchange Commission’s X social media account. Derek B. Johnson also had the story for CyberScoop.
- A new survey of government security professionals found that large numbers cite legacy systems and lack of guidance as hindrances to implementing post-quantum cryptography standards, according to an article by Madison Alder in FedScoop. Justin Doubleday wrote about the survey for Federal News Network.
- In other cybersecurity research news, DiMolfetta shared news on research, supported by White House officials, finding that very few software developers globally are embracing secure by design training initiatives into the design and development of their products.
- On the state and local government side, Keely Quinlan of StateScoop wrote about the results of a Maryland bug bounty program that identified more than 40 vulnerabilities in state websites. And Chris Teale of Route 50 provided an update on lessons state CIOs learned from the recent Crowdstrike outage.
News on Chief AI Officers
Finally, check out a new series of articles just launched by Nextgov/FCW on the various newly-appointed chief AI officers across the federal government. So far, the publication has run pieces on CAIOs at the Transportation Security Administration, the Department of Energy and the Department of Labor, with more to come.
That’s it for this week. I will be taking some time off next week and will publish my next roundup the following week on November 1. Thanks again for reading, and don’t forget you can subscribe to receive these updates in your inbox by filling out the brief form below with your name and email address.