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Today, the National Institute of Standards and Technology ("NIST") published Special Publication 800-171, Revision 2, Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in Nonfederal Systems and Organizations.

According to the press release, NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2 contains only minor editorial changes and does not change any of the basic and derived security requirements under the framework:

Revision 2 provides minor editorial changes in Chapters One and Two, and in the Gloss...

This week's Weekly Debrief covers a variety of interesting topics, including Overstock's protest of GSA's e-marketplace, DISA's data breach, DHS waiving contracting rules for the border wall project, two cloud procurements in the intel community, and Flour calls off the sale of its government business unit.

GSA

• FedScoop – Overstock.com protest could delay GSA commercial e-marketplace pilots until April or beyond

  • ​"The General Services Administration responded Friday to a...

This week's Weekly Debrief covers the JEDI protest, trouble with FBO's migration to beta.SAM.gov, Trump's budget, and CISA's role in election security.

JEDI

• Federal Times – Pentagon and Microsoft must halt work on JEDI cloud ... for now

  • ​"A federal judge ruled the Pentagon and Microsoft must temporarily suspend work on the Department of Defense’s controversial Joint Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure contract while a court hears Amazon’s challenge to the award decision.Pentagon officials...

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims granted Amazon Web Services, Inc.'s ("AWS") Motion for Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction in its bid protest against the Department of Defense's ("DOD") Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure ("JEDI") cloud contract to Microsoft Corporation.  

The injunction prevents DoD from awarding any task orders to Microsoft under the JEDI contract until COFC lifts the injunction.  Though filed under seal, COFC provided initial details reg...

A tale of two bid protests challenging awards of other transaction agreements ("OTA"), both of which were dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.  On the one hand, the Court of Federal Claims determined that an Air Force OTA award was neither a "procurement contract" nor "in connection with" a procurement, and therefore it did not have Tucker Act jurisdiction to hear the case.  [1]

On the other hand, a U.S. District Court determined that: 1) an Army OTA was a contract an...

This week's Weekly Debrief covers the multi-billion dollar CIA cloud, Space Force, election security, ODNI's updated counterintelligence strategy, and how NIST is exploring data security.

CIA

• NextGov – CIA Issues Draft Solicitation for Next Step in Multibillion-Dollar Cloud Journey

  • ​"The Central Intelligence Agency released a draft request for proposal Wednesday for its Commercial Cloud Enterprise, or C2E contract. Obtained by Nextgov, the draft RFP indicates C2E will be a multi-award...

This week's Weekly Debrief covers the CMMC, GSA's multiple award merger, fake comments on Federal rule makings, CISA subpoena power, and Interior formally grounding Chinese-made drones.

CMMC

• Federal News Network – Pentagon issues long-awaited cyber framework for Defense industry

  • "The Defense Department on Friday published a set of sweeping cybersecurity standards that will begin to be incorporated into Defense contracts later this year, marking a major milestone in an overhaul of...

Later today, the Department of Defense will release version 1.0 of its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification ("CMMC").  With the CMMC moving full steam ahead, several new pieces of information (below) have come to light regarding the timing of when the CMMC will appear DoD solicitations and the CMMC Accreditation Body's ("CMMC-AB") efforts to train the third-party assessors who will be performing CMMC assessments.

Given that this recent news might caus...

This week's Weekly Debrief covers more JEDI news, Pentagon AI lethality, CMMC, State's recent cyber audit, Treasury's cyber efforts in the financial sector, and GSA's new standards for government websites.

Defense

• Federal News Network – Amazon asks federal court to stop work on JEDI Cloud contract

  • ​"Amazon Web Services has asked a federal judge to block the Defense Department and Microsoft from getting to work on the Pentagon’s multibillion dollar JEDI Cloud contrac...

Competition in the government contracting marketplace is fierce.  One need only attend an industry day event or scroll through LinkedIn to catch a glimpse into just how many contractors are vying for or winning contracts or spots on coveted multiple award ID/IQ vehicles.  To be successful, it is often said that contractors must have not only the "right stuff" but also the "right people."

Given that your staffing approach can play such a critical role in winning contracts, it's no s...