DefenseScoop was briefed on the new DIU-led pursuit.
JANUARY 25, 2024
The Pentagon is in the midst of launching five new Defense Innovation OnRamp Hubs where startups, academia, industry and others in specific regions around the U.S. can more strategically engage and directly connect with department officials to commercialize in-demand, dual-use technologies that are also being prioritized in their local areas.
A program office within the Defense Innovation Unit, the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), officially unveiled the latest of those hubs in Seattle Jan. 21. Two other sites in Kansas and Ohio hosted launch events in mid-December, and locations in Arizona and Hawaii are each set to celebrate their openings within the next few months.
“The OnRamp Hub program was developed to streamline collaboration between industry, academia and defense operations to get the needed technologies, information and products in the hands of those who need it most. We are extremely excited to work with these locations to bring this opportunity to their innovation ecosystem,” NSIN’s Acting Defense Innovation OnRamp Hub Program Director Cassie Muffley told DefenseScoop this week.
Each of these new centers “will execute three primary functions to lower the barrier to entry” for working with the Defense Department, Muffley explained. They include:
- Offering a physical location that serves as an off-base, easily accessible “front door” for new people, ideas, and technologies from academia and industry to connect to multiple facets of the DOD.
- Providing DOD entities from multiple services with a means to better coordinate activities and outreach into specific geographic regions.
- Providing access to a physical and digital space for DOD “intrapreneurs” to meet, collaborate and innovate.
The overarching idea is that these sort of one-stop shops will help the Pentagon better leverage startups and academic communities for new concept development, and facilitate the creation of new, dual-use ventures by commercializing DOD lab technology and through customer discovery activities.
They’re also meant to make it easier for interested entrepreneurs to learn how to break into the defense industrial base, and get Pentagon insiders more acclimated in various domestic tech hotspots.
“By changing the way that small and medium-sized technology companies work with the DOD, we can grow our technological edge that our service branches need to stay competitive and deter conflict,” Muffley said.
To ultimately select these five locations, DIU and NSIN officials assessed a number of factors about different areas, including the robustness of the defense innovation ecosystem; relevance of the innovation ecosystem to DOD needs; health of the innovation ecosystem; expressed demand signal from the innovation ecosystem; existence of similar facilities within key geographic areas; and expressed demand from the Pentagon.
“Each OnRamp Hub will deliver tailored opportunities, programming, and activities, based on their local needs and opportunities to leverage and partner with other activities,” Muffley told DefenseScoop.
As an example, NSIN — in partnership with the Washington Air National Guard (WA ANG), 194 Communications Flight — is preparing to lead an upcoming pitch event and demonstration to identify emerging technologies that could be used to establish two-way communication during an eruption of Mt. Rainier or other natural disasters.
“Participating in NSIN programming through OnRamp Hub: Washington assists innovators in navigating the process of gaining government contracts,” Muffley also noted.
All of the hubs will also provide education related to doing business with the DOD — on topics such as specialized funding options, determining and filing for the correct business classifications, and complex policy compliance.
“We support the warfighter in gaining a competitive advantage when dealing with 21st century conflicts. This is an amazing opportunity for local entities to engage in national and international efforts that truly make a difference,” Muffley said.
Written by Brandi Vincent
Brandi Vincent is DefenseScoop’s Pentagon correspondent. She reports on emerging and disruptive technologies, and associated policies, impacting the Defense Department and its personnel. Prior to joining Scoop News Group, Brandi produced a long-form documentary and worked as a journalist at Nextgov, Snapchat and NBC Network. She was named a 2021 Paul Miller Washington Fellow by the National Press Foundation and was awarded SIIA’s 2020 Jesse H. Neal Award for Best News Coverage. Brandi grew up in Louisiana and received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland.
Article link: https://defensescoop.com/2024/01/25/nsin-defense-innovation-onramp-hubs-diu-5-states/?
The special notice about the meeting comes as the Pentagon is pursuing a warfighting construct known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2).
JANUARY 22, 2024
The Office of the Secretary of Defense plans to gather a select group of innovators this spring to pitch technical solutions for moving, processing and transforming data into actionable information.
The special notice about the meeting, posted Jan. 19 on Sam.gov, comes as the Pentagon is pursuing a warfighting construct known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which is aimed at connecting the U.S. military’s various sensors, data streams and weapon systems — and those of its international allies and partners — under a more unified network for faster and better decision-making.
The so-called Innovation Outreach Solutions Meeting, slated for April 15-16 in McLean, Virginia, will be hosted by OSD’s innovation and modernization office — which falls under the research and engineering directorate — in partnership with the Joint Staff’s intelligence directorate (J2) and the Army’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance task force. Tech developers tapped to attend will conduct technical presentations and have a confab with Defense Department officials about their potential solutions for “unleashing data.”
“Information is central to all military functions. Rapid and reliable access to data is key to maintaining an enduring U.S. advantage in times of peace and crisis. As the network of data sources and decision-makers grows, as does the urgency to respond to emerging situations, so does the demand for the Department of Defense (DoD) to discover innovative solutions that enable the secure collection, storing, processing, monitoring, analyzing, and communicating of data at speed and scale,” the notice states.
The Pentagon is looking for tools that will ensure data is visible, accessible, understandable, linked, trustworthy, interoperable and secure, according to the needs statement.
Technologies of interest include solutions for transmitting and receiving data and signals over distances greater than current capabilities allow; connecting systems with data sources located “anywhere from the stratosphere to the seafloor”; multi-path networks for operating in environments with connectivity interference or degradation; boosting bandwidth at reduced power; edge computing; and “novel approaches” for transferring data, such as quantum or laser tech.
However, better methods for moving data aren’t enough. The department also needs tools for processing the vast amount of information it collects. That includes capabilities to “triage” inflows and prioritize the most critical and time-sensitive info; automate the tagging, cataloging and storing of data so it can be quickly found and accessed when needed; integrate “thousands of inputs” from disparate sources; and detect “anomalies” in cyber networks in real-time with machine learning technologies.
To help decision-makers understand and trust the data they’re being fed, the Pentagon wants information visualization tools, algorithms that can identify and provide automated alerts about items of interest, and enablers for “confidently ingesting data and information into existing AI/ML capabilities and training next-generation algorithms,” per the needs statement.
Applications to participate in the meeting are due Feb. 22.
Written by Jon Harper
Jon Harper is Managing Editor of DefenseScoop, the Scoop News Group’s newest online publication focused on the Pentagon and its pursuit of new capabilities. He leads an award-winning team of journalists in providing breaking news and in-depth analysis on military technology and the ways in which it is shaping how the Defense Department operates and modernizes. You can also follow him on Twitter @Jon_Harper_
Article link: https://defensescoop.com/2024/01/22/osd-innovation-outreach-solutions-meeting-unleashing-data/?
Through Seamless Exchange, the Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization (FEHRM) office, Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) dramatically increase the depth and longitudinal nature of the electronic health record (EHR).
To streamline the federal EHR end-user experience, the FEHRM, DOD and VA focused on Seamless Exchange—an enhancement piloted by VA for data retrieval, deduplication and synchronization that will normalize data from numerous sources with varied formats, standards and duplications into a simplified, contextual and usable platform supporting health care. Seamless Exchange joint design decisions and reviews were completed last summer. Commercial sites using and testing Seamless Exchange shared positive feedback on its data deduplication and automated capabilities, ensuring ease of use and easy access to up-to-date, comprehensive information. The VA Seamless Exchange pilot went live at the La Grande Clinic within the Walla Walla VA system on November 7. Clinical Adoption was well received by stakeholders. The plan for expansion of the Seamless Exchange functionality at Walla Walla VA will include adding more functionality, expanding to all clinics at Walla Walla VA and will follow up with an enterprise-wide deployment in 2024. Plans for the FEHRM to expand Seamless Exchange across DOD is underway.
Article link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/seamless-exchange-strives-consolidate-federal-electronic-health-9yasf
By Jayna Legg, Public Affairs Specialist
January 18, 2024
The Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (Lovell FHCC) will launch a new Federal Electronic Health Record (FEHR) in March 2024.
This new FEHR will simplify the patient experience for beneficiaries and staff and enhance the ability of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Department of Defense (DOD) to meaningfully share data with each other and the rest of the U.S. health care system.
An EHR is a system that’s used to securely document, store, retrieve, share and analyze information about a patient’s health care—it’s a digital version of a health record.
A federal EHR will provide a continuous and complete medical record for all beneficiaries from the time they join the military, through their transition to Veteran status and beyond. The federal EHR puts patients at the center because it:
- Reduces time spent repeating health histories, undergoing duplicative tests and managing printed health records.
- Supports beneficiaries with securely communicating with their care teams.
- Tracks medications, vaccines, allergies and lab results in a single health care record.
- Increases access to health care professionals through modern telehealth patient portals.
- Provides easier access to military treatment information to support service-connected disability claims when transitioning from active-duty to Veteran status.
Accessing the new patient portals
Once Lovell FHCC goes live with the FEHR system in March 2024:
- VA Beneficiaries with a My HealtheVet account will move to a new patient portal, called My VA Health, to manage their VA health care online. For additional information, visit https://www.va.gov/lovell-federal-health-care-va/programs/electronic-health-record-modernization-ehrm/.
- For DOD Beneficiaries, the MHS GENESIS Patient Portal will replace TRICARE Online at Lovell FHCC. For additional information, visit https://www.va.gov/lovell-federal-health-care-tricare/programs/electronic-health-record-modernization-ehrm/.
Keep checking these websites for more information and events focused on Lovell FHCC’s launch of the FEHR. These sites include an overview of the new portals, a checklist to prepare for the change and answers to frequently asked questions.
Joining a federal partnership to transform care
Lovell FHCC is the latest facility to join the federal EHR, which is already in use at 98 percent of DOD parent military treatment facilities around the world, five VA medical centers, 109 Department of Homeland Security U.S. Coast Guard sites and seven Department of Commerce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sites. There are 9.5 million unique patients currently in the federal EHR.
17 Jan. 2024 – Last updated: 17 Jan. 2024 13:21
Quantum technologies are getting closer to revolutionizing the world of innovation and can be game-changers for security, including modern warfare. Ensuring that the Alliance is ”quantum-ready” is the aim of NATO’s first-ever quantum strategy that was approved by NATO Foreign Ministers on 28 November. On Wednesday (17 January 2024), NATO releases a summary of the strategy.
The strategy outlines how quantum can be applied to defence and security in areas such as sensing, imaging, precise positioning, navigation and timing, improve the detection of submarines, and upgrade and secure data communications using quantum resistant cryptography.
Many of these technologies are already used in the private sector and have become the subject of strategic competition. NATO’s quantum strategy helps foster and guide NATO’s cooperation with industry to develop a transatlantic quantum technologies ecosystem, while preparing NATO to defend itself against the malicious use of quantum technologies.
Quantum is one of the technological areas that NATO Allies have prioritized due to their implications for defence and security. These include artificial intelligence, data and computing, autonomy, biotechnology and human enhancements, hypersonic technologies, energy and propulsion, novel materials, next-generation communications networks and space.
Quantum technologies are already part of NATO’s innovation efforts. Six of the 44 companies selected to join NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA)’s programme are specialised in quantum. Their innovations are expected to help progress in the areas of next-generation cryptography, develop high-speed lasers to improve satellite connectivity, and deploy quantum-enhanced 3-D imaging sensors in challenging undersea environments. DIANA also anticipates quantum technologies forming a key part of solutions to its future challenge programme.
Building on its new strategy, NATO will now start work to establish a Transatlantic Quantum Community to engage with government, industry and academia from across the innovation ecosystems.
OFFICIAL TEXTS
- Summary of NATO’s Quantum Technologies Strategy16 Jan. 2024
Article link: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_221601.htm
Jan. 16, 2024 | By Joseph Clark , DOD News
The Defense Department will continue to work closely across agencies and with industry partners as it implements its strategy for strengthening the defense industrial base to meet the future needs of the warfighter, the Pentagon’s top industrial base policy official said.
Laura D. Taylor-Kale, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy, said DOD’s National Defense Industrial Strategy represents a bold vision that will require close and sustained collaboration across the full defense industrial ecosystem.
“While we say that it will guide use for the next three to five years, we’re also very much talking about having a generational change,” Taylor-Kale said of the newly released strategy during a discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., July 11, 2024.
“We understand that there’s a lot that is part of the current state of the industrial base,” she said. “You can’t make those changes over one or two years. It’s going to take concerted effort over time, not just within the Department of Defense.”
Taylor-Kale offered her vision just hours after releasing the NDIS, the first comprehensive strategy document produced by DOD to plot the course for creating a modern, resilient defense industrial ecosystem to deter U.S. adversaries and meet the production demands posed by evolving threats.
In unveiling the strategy, she underscored the urgent need to shore up the defense industrial base as U.S. adversaries build up their military power to levels not seen since World War II. She noted China’s increasing threat to upend the existing international order. She also highlighted the United States’ continued support for Ukraine as it defends itself from Russian aggression and for Israel in its fight against Hamas.
Despite the task at hand, Taylor-Kale said there is broad enthusiasm across government and industry partners and among key global allies.
The defense industrial base must continue to meet present demands, while remaining capable of adapting to future conflicts.
The strategy focuses on four key areas critical to building a modernized defense industrial ecosystem over the next three to five years. Those areas include resilient supply chains, workforce readiness, flexible acquisition and economic deterrence.
The NDIS is the product of months of engagement from stakeholders from across industry and government, which began at the direction of Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks in March 2023.
The document also reflects President Joe Biden’s broader efforts to shore up domestic manufacturing and critical supply chains in the U.S.
Officials said the final strategy incorporates more than a thousand comments received from stakeholders.
Taylor-Kale said the strategy was far more than an “aspirational document,” noting that the department is finalizing an implementation plan that will detail measurable actions and metrics to gauge progress on the goals.
“I want to emphasize that the DOD can’t do it alone,” she said. “It will need the interagency. It will need our industry partners. It will need our global allies and partners, as well as our people on [Capitol Hill].”
She added that the strategy was worked extensively with elected leaders, and there is a broad, bipartisan consensus around improving the industrial base and meeting the needs of the warfighter.
“In my view, we can’t afford to wait,” Taylor-Kale said. “We have seen over the past few years the importance of why we need resilient supply chains – the importance [is] not just to us domestically, but also for our close allies and partners.
“We think that the time for action is now,” she said. “We’re starting with this strategy and setting this vision. We’re wanting everyone to join with us so we can move forward, implement and meet the needs of warfighters today as well as for the future.”
Thursday, Jan 11
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information from Pentagon officials.
WASHINGTON — America’s defense industry needs “generational” change to keep pace with competitors like Russia and China.
This is the Pentagon’s assessment in its first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy, arriving at a moment of extreme demand. The U.S. is supporting partners threatened abroad — including Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — forcing careful management of American aid and readiness.
“This strategy is about balancing the tension points,” said Halimah Najieb-Locke, the Pentagon’s acting deputy for industrial base policy, in a briefing with reporters.
The document is a self-described “call to action,” with almost 50 pages of recommendations to build a “fully capable 21st century” defense sector. It features the Pentagon’s most up to date thinking on the health of its suppliers, stretched thin after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic. America still builds the best weapons in the world, the strategy says, but that alone isn’t enough in a more competitive world.
The U.S. “must have the capacity to produce those capabilities at speed and scale to maximize our advantage,” it says.
That advantage may be narrowing in part because of America’s main competitor. In the last 30 years, the document says, China “became the global industrial powerhouse in many key areas — from shipbuilding to critical minerals to microelectronics.” China’s capacity, the document says, in some cases surpasses that of America and its allies in Asia and Europe.
Still, Cynthia Cook, a defense industry expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, says China’s advances are only part of what’s motivating this work.
“I would not say that that’s the entire purpose … behind the strategy,” she said.
Instead, Cook said, the document is meant to be the summit of more than six years of Pentagon work. Former President Donald Trump ordered the Defense Department to review its industrial base early in his term, leading to a report issued in 2018. Since then, more reviews have followed, including one on supplier competitiveness.
“All of these factors together make it fairly clear that it’s time for a rethink of how the department manages industry,” said Cook. “Without a strategy, it’s going to be one-offs here and there.”
The document is split into four sections, focusing on supply chains, workforce, Pentagon acquisition and the American economy overall. There are more than two dozen recommendations, which include diversifying the Defense Department’s suppliers, training more workers for industry-related careers, increasing commercial acquisitions and sharing more technology with U.S. partners.
Neither the problems nor the remedies listed are new. They aren’t meant to be, said Cook. The value of the strategy, she said, is its ability to coordinate industrial base work across the Pentagon, including in the services.
“Part of this strategy is really marshaling a lot of what we’ve already been doing within the department,” said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy Laura D. Taylor-Kale, also speaking at the briefing.
Specifically, she referenced a map of the supply chains for 110 different weapons systems the Pentagon has been developing since November. This map, added Najieb-Locke, will help find links further down the supply chain that are particularly brittle — whether due to approaching obsolescence or being a single point of failure.
Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in December, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante said the document is also meant to be a broader signal to industry.
Najieb-Locke elaborated on that point Thursday. On one end, the strategy is meant to signal longer-term commitment to its current suppliers by putting the department’s goals in writing. On the other, it affirms that the Pentagon needs to work more with non-traditional companies, particularly those in the innovation space.
“We’re answering the industry’s call for consistent demand signal by organizing ourselves and targeting our efforts,” she said.
Despite that, some former defense officials and analysts who spoke with Defense News were skeptical of the strategy’s value. Heidi Peters, a defense industry expert at the RAND Corporation think tank, questioned why there needed to be a new strategy when the Pentagon already publishes so much literature on industry.
David Berteau, president of the Professional Services Council, which represents government contractors, said the strategy was a good “first step,” but he wants to see more attention paid to sustaining systems rather than just buying them.
Even more, Berteau said he was focused on how the strategy would be implemented, something he said is “more important than the strategy itself.”
While reshaping the defense industry may take a generation, the document said, it has shorter-term goals for the next three to five years. The Pentagon expects to publish an unclassified implementation plan in February — and a classified one later in March, said the officials briefing Thursday.
The classified plan will focus on many of the existing authorities the Pentagon has, such as the Defense Production Act, which Taylor-Kale said are “underutilized.”
The implementation plan will feature a list of priorities and metrics to gauge the strategy’s success, said Najieb-Locke. One of those priorities in the next five years is to create a faster and more stable supply of “long lead items,” which slow production, she said. To do so, she added, the department will have to better track its lower-tier suppliers, who sometimes don’t even know their work is supporting the Pentagon.
That need makes it more important for the Defense Department to continue speaking with partners across the government and in industry, Taylor-Kale said.
“We’re not going to come out of our our offices, so to speak, talk to people in and then go back in and shut the door,” she said. “We’re continuing the conversation.”
About Noah Robertson
Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.
Article link: https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2024/01/11/pentagons-first-industrial-strategy-calls-for-generational-change/
By Jory Heckman
December 21, 2023 6:26 pm
The Department of Veterans Affairs is looking at facial recognition technology for its frontline medical workers to log into their workstations more quickly, and spend more time treating veterans.
VA Chief Information Security Officer Lynette Sherrill said the department plans on piloting facial recognition tools next year at VA hospitals, particularly for frontline clinicians working in intensive care units.
The pilot, if successful, would give VA health care employees an alternative to using their Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards to securely log onto the department’s network.
“I’ve got nurses and clinicians trying to care for veterans. And they’ve got to reach for a PIV card … and plug it into a workstation to log in, while they’re trying to give a veteran a shot or give a patient an exam. So if I can make that a more frictionless authentication experience for them, I feel like that’s my job to help them,” Sherrill said Nov. 7 at the Rise8’s Prodacity summit in Washington, D.C.
Sherrill told Federal News Network on the sidelines of the event that the VA plans to run facial recognition pilots throughout 2024 with clinical staff.
“Much like we use facial recognition to log into an iPhone today, that’s that type of experience we want to give VA clinical staff,” she said in an interview.
Sherrill said there’s already a high rate of PIV card utilization among the VA workforce. About 95% of employees, she added, are using their PIV cards to log onto the VA network.
But even with those metrics, that means roughly 30,000 VA employees are logging on only with a username and password.
Sherrill said the facial recognition pilot is focused on providing a “more frictionless authentication process” for VA clinical staff.
“The technology is finally there, where we can utilize the technology to provide a better experience for our end users,” she said.
Carrie Lee, VA’s deputy chief information officer for product engineering service, told Federal News Network that she’s heading up the department’s new identity, credential and access management (ICAM) modernization efforts.
“We’re looking at our single sign-on experiences for both internal and external users, making sure that we are using multifactor [authentication], and making it compliant, making it an easy experience for the users,” Lee said.
For external users, Lee said VA is using Login.gov and transitioning off of legacy credentials that only require a username and password, and may not be as secure.
The VA is also setting a new standard for cybersecurity across its networks.
VA is shifting some of its systems to a continuous Authority to Operate (ATO). It’s a trend that’s already happening across the Defense Department.
The idea is VA will keep checking in to make sure its systems uphold cybersecurity requirements, rather than just checking off that those standards are met once before their launch.
“We have quarterly reviews that review the security posture of every application within that continuous ATO, where I can click down and see how many risks were mitigated, how many vulnerabilities did we keep from being released into production,” Lee said. “I can go in at any point, and understand what’s happening in that environment for multiple applications.”
Sherrill said the continuous ATO marks a step toward the VA having an “automated enterprise risk view” across its network.
“With the ever-changing threat landscape that we’re dealing with in cybersecurity today, one of the things that is very hard to keep up with is how is the risk posture of all of our systems changing,” she said.
Sherrill added that the VA, with its new automated cybersecurity tools, will be able to respond more quickly to zero-day vulnerabilities and other emerging threats.
“What this integration and automation is going to [is] … we’d know immediately, ‘These are our six most critical systems impacted by this zero-day vulnerability.’ And we’d be able to focus our resources on those systems, to make sure that we could maintain a risk posture that’s acceptable to the organization,” she said.
Lee said the continuous ATO will also allow VA’s IT workforce to develop code and software more quickly, and spend less time on manual cybersecurity compliance work.
“It also frees up a lot of people from manually entering into our [governance, risk and compliance] systems the compliance information, which can take a lot of resources, to be able to focus on higher value valuable tasks, such as actually developing systems,” Lee said.
Lee said the VA has more than 1,000 systems with an ATO. Of those, she said she’s the authorizing official for about 400 of them. She said she spends about an hour each week authorizing systems.
“VA is an extremely complex organization. We’re probably the largest IT infrastructure of any civilian federal agency,” Lee said. “I really need to understand the security of the system I’m looking at the time I look at it. So, the assurance of having those automated controls in place, and understanding that technical risk posture, instead of just the compliance is very important to me, from an authorizing official perspective.”
Lee said the VA has reduced the ATO process from 400 days to about 60 days for new products coming into the environment.
VA’s Office of Information and Technology (VA OIT) is also taking steps to make sure its employees are incorporating cybersecurity into the foundation of everything in development.
Sherrill said no VA OIT development team is allowed to publish “any critical or high vulnerabilities in code.”
“We understand very uniformly that you can no longer produce a quality system if it’s not secure. And that’s our mantra at VA now — if it’s not secure, it’s not quality code, it’s not a quality product, so you’ve got to go back to the drawing board,” she said.
The VA is also focused on bringing in the next generation of cyber workers.
“We’ve got to use nontraditional hiring methods and nontraditional people and get them interested in cybersecurity,” Sherrill said. “We’ve got cybersecurity people leaving the cybersecurity industry because of burnout. We have to stop doing that. We’ve got to figure out how do we fill that pipeline back.”
Sherrill told Federal News Network that the VA is looking at ways to partner with the Defense Department’s SkillBridge program, which places transitioning service members into civilian careers.
“If I can bring in transitioning service members who already have cyber skills, and they’re transitioning out of the service, and I can give them a soft place to transition to and the VA and then give them two [or] three years of training, and they launch into industry — that’s a win,” she said. “But if they choose to stay in VA, and they get passionate about the mission, like most of us are in serving veterans, that’s a win as well.”
Sherrill said the VA also sees potential in reaching out to military spouses to consider careers in cybersecurity.
“They have an aptitude that they uniquely bring into the field, and I think that’s an untapped resource for us. We’ve got to look at these non-traditional places to really bring resources into the cyber pool,” she said.
The VA this summer rolled out a Special Salary Rate for its IT and cybersecurity employees, resulting in an average 17% pay raise. The SSR is meant to narrow the gap between what the government and private sector can afford to pay in-demand tech experts.
“We’re bringing in people and being able to pay them, not at the exact level they would be making in the industry, but close to that level. And between that, the benefits we offer and our amazing mission, I think we’ve been able to get the best talent,” Lee said.
FORT MEADE, Md.–The National Security Agency (NSA) published its 2023 Cybersecurity Year in Review today to share its recent cybersecurity successes and how it is working with partners to deliver on cybersecurity advances that enhance national security. This year’s report highlights NSA’s work with U.S government partners, foreign partners, and the Defense Industrial Base.
“The combined talent of our partners is the greatest competitive advantage we have to confront the increasingly sophisticated threats we see today”- Rob Joyce, Director of Cybersecurity
The Cybersecurity Year in Review highlights NSA’s recent cybersecurity efforts, including:
- Establishing the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Security Center.
- Detecting stealthy People’s Republic of China (PRC) intrusions into U.S. critical infrastructure and joined forces with partners (CISA, FBI, NIST, etc.) to expose those intrusions.
- Collaborating with industry, government stakeholders, and academia to modernize cryptography to scale cybersecurity solutions and address the quantum threat.
“Cybersecurity matters. It matters to our partners and it matters to us. It ensures that our information, our intelligence, our knowledge can be shared securely.”- General Paul M. Nakasone, U.S Army; Commander, U.S Cyber Command; Director, National Security Agency; Chief, Central Security Service
This report includes information about NSA’s cybersecurity partnerships and the efforts in building them. This year NSA:
- Inaugurated the new AI Security Center within the Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, which will promote the secure development, integration, and adoption of AI capabilities within National Security Systems (NSS) and the Defense Industrial Base (DIB).
- Scaled NSA’s cybersecurity impact against global threats like Russian cyberespionage malware and malicious cyber activity from the People’s Republic of China together with U.S. and international partners and collaborators.
- Increased enrollments in NSA’s no cost cybersecurity services to Department of Defense contractors by 400%, hardening infrastructure and strengthening the Defense Industrial Base.
For questions or feedback on the report, contact Cybersecurity@nsa.gov or CybersecurityReports@nsa.gov. For any media inquiries, contact MediaRelations@nsa.gov.
Read the 2023 NSA Cybersecurity Year in Review to learn more.
healthcarereimagined 