Federal government lacking expertise in AI and cybersecurity, GAO reports – Federal News Network
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- The Pentagon wants to incentivize defense contractors to take their cybersecurity more seriously. Having good cybersecurity could result in higher profit margins for defense contractors. Or it could help differentiate their proposals from the competition. Those are a couple of incentives the Defense Department is considering before the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification becomes a reality. Getting a CMMC certificate will eventually be a requirement in some defense contracts. But it will not be effective for at least nine months as it works through a lengthy rulemaking process. So DoD is looking for ways to encourage network security practices in the meantime. (Federal News Network)
- The Defense Department is looking to expand private in-home childcare as one way to deal with staffing shortages at military-run day care centers. DoD started a pilot program earlier this year that vets private providers against the same standards it uses for its own child development centers. If they are approved, parents get a subsidy to help pay for the care. DoD is also expanding its outreach efforts to certify more private child care centers for fee assistance.
- The Defense Intelligence Agency just inked a massive IT contract. DIA awarded General Dynamics Information Technology an $829 million contract to provide IT help desk services for the entire agency. GDIT beat out four other competitors to win the award. The deal runs through January 2032. GDIT is already on contract to provide cloud-based email and collaboration tools across the Defense Department. That’s under the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions contract, which provides Microsoft 365 services to 3.2 million DoD users.
- As the physical and logical security systems come closer together, the General Services Administration is giving agencies some help. GSA issued a new self-assessment toolkit based on the NIST standards for local or enterprisewide physical access control systems. Agencies can use the assessment to obtain recommended changes to a physical access control policy or PACS configuration that meets the intended federal identity and credential access management end state. This end state for PACS encompass secure, auditable and interoperable physical access controls based on authentication mechanisms available via the PIV card.
- The Defense Department’s multibillion-dollar household goods moving contract faces another bid protest. Connected Global Solutions challenged the $6.8 billion award at the Government Accountability Office. They join another losing bidder, American Roll-On-Roll-Off Cargo, who also filed a GAO protest last week. GAO has until early March to decide whether to uphold one or both protests. This is …….