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The DHS Cyber Security Safety Review Board will review the Salt Typhoon attack

Online Niel October 30, 2024

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Review Board will look into an alleged hack of US telecommunications networks linked to China. DHS confirmed that the board’s next review will examine intrusions related to the “Salt Typhoon” hacking group. The group reportedly targeted the communications of US political figures as well as a wiretapping system used by federal law enforcement. US agencies are already investigating the incidents. The Cybersecurity Review Board typically studies the circumstances leading to major cyber incidents for lessons learned and recommendations.
Next, the General Services Administration (GSA) will evaluate AbilityOne contractors under the Contractor Past Performance Reporting System, or C-PARS. Jeff Koses, GSA’s senior director of acquisitions, signed a waiver from the Federal Acquisition Regulations yesterday, establishing this change. FAR stated that agencies will not evaluate performance for contracts awarded under AbilityOne procedures. But Koses said that’s an outdated concept, and including AbilityOne contractors in the CPAR will give them more ability to compete and win contracts. The Department of Defense issued a similar FAR waiver in 2013. GSA spends more than $180 million a year with AbiltyOne contractors.
If you plan to vote by mail, the Postal Service (USPS) recommends that you mail your ballot today. The USPS so far delivers almost all mail-in ballots on time. But they are urging voters to return their ballots seven days after their electoral office is due to receive them. Voters have already cast more than 44 million votes before Election Day. Just over half of these early votes come from mail-in ballots.
Letter carrier groups are pushing for a “no” vote on their union’s tentative contract with the Postal Service. Letter carriers across the country said they were frustrated with the terms of a tentative contract negotiated by the National Association of Letter Carriers. The tentative agreement includes salary increases of 1.3 percent for each year of the three-year contract and semi-annual cost-of-living adjustments. NALC National President Brian Renfroe said the tentative agreement is the best deal possible. The USPS reported a net loss of $6.5 billion last year.
The upcoming Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) acquisition, called ModEl, or Modernization and Engineering Lifecycle Refresh, will focus on customer engineering, professional services, capital planning and telecommunications professional services. While the agency is still in the process of understanding the scope of the project, the contract value for ModEl could be between $250 million and $1 billion. DISA’s J6 C4 will lead the effort. The agency plans to use a competitive team arrangement — an approach DISA has not used often in the past. An industry day is scheduled for November 11, with the final RFP launch date expected in the second quarter of FY2025.
The Defense Information Systems Agency wants to focus on modernizing the cyber perimeter. DISA’s director of cyber security and analysis says modernizing the cyber perimeter is one of the agency’s areas of general interest. “I’ve heard some people who I consider to be kind of zero-trust fanatics saying that they don’t think there’s a reason for a cyber perimeter. They don’t see what we see every day.” But while the agency understands the threat, it lacks visibility into the latest technical solutions and capabilities that could strengthen perimeter defenses.
For the first time in recent years, two federal governing councils are meeting. The Chief Human Capital Council and the Performance Improvement Council will host a joint meeting Nov. 7 to discuss how the federal workforce can better support the agency’s performance goals. Kirsty Daphnis, chief of the federal workforce branch at OMB, said the meeting will focus on how agencies can align their workforces to achieve their mission goals. Daphnis, speaking yesterday at ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation Conference in Hershey, Pa., said among the topics the boards will address are improving organizational health and performance and how the two groups can work together within their agencies in the future .
The Department of Defense (DoD) has launched a new open source intelligence strategy. DoD is putting a major focus on artificial intelligence and data science in its new five-year OSINT strategy. The document released by the Defense Intelligence Agency earlier this month outlines DoD’s approach to the evolving OSINT space. The strategy said AI technologies will be crucial to managing and analyzing an ever-growing stream of open source data. DIA also wants to make OSINT a premier intelligence discipline by institutionalizing the training, the job, and the career.