GovConJudicata Weekly Debrief (1/20–24)
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
"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 contract. In a motion to the Court of Federal Claims late Wednesday, AWS requested both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to stop work on JEDI."
"Amazon Web Services asked a federal judge to halt work under the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract for the duration of its legal protest. In a sealed motion filed Wednesday, AWS asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims for a temporary restraining order and injunction to stop the Pentagon and JEDI winner Microsoft from doing work under the contract."
"The Pentagon is eager to plug artificial intelligence into lethality. How the benefits of modern information processing, so far mostly realized in the commercial sector, will be applied to the use of weapons in war remains unclear, but it is a problem the military is interested in solving."
Cyber
"The Defense Department has been planning for nearly a year to update its cybersecurity certification framework for vendors who handle its sensitive information — but that’s apparently news to some contractors.A new survey published by Tier 1 Cyber found few DOD vendors are aware of the DOD’s new cybersecurity standard for contractors, the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). Only 24 percent of the responding defense contractors could accurately identify its acronym in the survey."
"The latest publication in a long line of reports drawing attention to the State Department’s failure to secure its information technology-dependent systems from cyberattacks reflects a general mismanagement of resources."
"The Department of the Treasury wants to better understand cybersecurity risks facing the U.S. financial sector’s critical infrastructure.According to a Jan. 22 notice in the Federal Register, the department is soliciting comments from the public and federal agencies about an information collection effort Treasury wants to start 'to enhance the security and resilience of financial services sector critical infrastructure and reduce operational risk.'"
GSA
"Agencies now have a concrete map for designing and developing public-facing websites that comply with the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act, or 21st Century IDEA Act, as the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Service released a set of web design standards for federal agencies Jan. 22."
. . .
