On today’s episode of The Daily Scoop Podcast, six government agencies have established a research consortium to link quantum computers.

Assistant Commissioner for the Office of Information Technology Category at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service Laura Stanton discusses the third round of awards for STARS III, the market research phase of Alliant 3 and what’s next for the paused Polaris solicitation.

The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. 

If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.

GSA Federal Acquisition Service’s Laura Stanton on STARS III, Alliant 3 and Polaris

If you were unable to make it to last week’s AITalks, you truly missed out on a special day. The first-ever event featured the top leaders in AI from across the public sector. However, we have a special treat today if you didn’t make it.

I hosted a dynamic panel on the role of the federal chief AI officer with two of the first federal CAIOs appointed in the role, as well as a top industry AI executive who’s working with federal agencies as they appoint and institute the CAIO role. It was my pleasure to be joined by Zach Whitman, CAIO and chief data scientist for GSA; Vinay Singh, chief financial officer and CAIO for HUD, and Dave Vennergrund, VP of AI & data Insights for GDIT.

Let’s go now to that conversation at the first-ever AITalks.

GSA’s Login.gov platform gets a new director

By the end of the year, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency plans to launch an automated vulnerability warning program to alert organizations that are running software with vulnerabilities being exploited by ransomware gangs, the agency’s director, Jen Easterly, said this week. Currently running in a pilot phase, the program is mandated by the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 and aims to reduce the number of ransomware attacks by getting the owners and operators of vulnerable systems to patch them before they can be infiltrated. Speaking at an event hosted by the Institute for Security and Technology, Easterly said the pilot is focused on reducing the prevalence of ransomware by using vulnerability scanning tools to let businesses know if they have vulnerabilities that need to be patched. CISA has issued 2,049 warnings since the pilot was launched last January. It has since expanded to include CISA’s database of known exploited vulnerabilities and common misconfigurations that can be linked to ransomware attacks.

CISA is building an automated ransomware warning program

The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon.

If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.

DHS launches an AI Safety and Security Board

President Biden’s executive order on AI, issued last October, set federal agencies on path to consider the adoption of generative AI in a safe and secure manner. While some agencies have expressed caution in using genAI, the EO discourages agencies from imposing broad general bans or blocks on agency use of generative AI and instead encourages them, with appropriate safeguards in place, to provide their personnel and programs with access to secure and reliable generative AI capabilities for the purposes of experimentation and routine tasks that carry a low risk of impacting Americans’ rights.

Still, the hype around generative AI, inside and outside government, is high, and there’s a propensity to see it as a panacea to fix all problems. But that’s not the case, according to Alison Smith, director of generative AI for Booz Allen Hamilton. Smith joins the Daily Scoop Podcast to explain how agencies should weigh whether generative AI is a good fit for a problem and what the federal generative AI landscape looks like today.

Generative AI is not a panacea

Today on the Daily Scoop podcast from the scoop news group data stolen in the change health care attack likely included us service members and the White House encourages agencies to turn towards skilled based hiring for cyber and tech jobs.

The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon.

Data Stolen in the Change Healthcare Attack Likely Included US Service Members

NASA Pushes Back on Gao’s Cyber Recommendations for Spacecraft and trade groups say CISA's incident reporting requirements go too far.

NASA Pushes Back on Gao’s Cyber Recommendations for Spacecraft

The IRS says it could run out of money to support modernization 

And, U.S. Cyber Command adds to its top brass

The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon.

If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop 
Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

The IRS says it could run out of money to support modernization

With all of the critical cyberattacks executed through the software supply chain in recent years, you’re sure to have heard about SBOMs, or software bills of materials, which are essentially ingredients lists of the components that make up a piece of software. The Biden administration in its 2021 cybersecurity executive order introduced new guidance for how federal agencies should request SBOMs from vendors when purchasing software so they can better understand what it’s made of and protect against attacks down the supply chain.

The Department of Homeland Security, through its Science and Technology Directorate, is advancing federal work on SBOMs, namely through a program led by its Silicon Valley Innovation Program. In partnership with CISA, the Silicon Valley Innovation Program in 2023 awarded funding to a cohort of startups to broadly promote the use of SBOMs by developing two core software modules—a multi-format SBOM translator and a software component identifier translator—to be delivered as open-source libraries which, in turn, will be integrated with their SBOM enabled commercial products. Just recently, that cohort delivered the first of those two tools. 

Joining the Daily Scoop to discuss the need for SBOMs broadly, the cohort’s progress and what’s next are Melissa Oh, managing director of DHS’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program, and Anil John, SVIP technical manager.

Inside DHS’s work to drive wider use of SBOMs

Today on the Daily Scoop podcast from the Scoop News group, a supercomputer sandbox for testing federal AI and evaluating the nation's cyber security posture.

A Supercomputer Sandbox for Testing Federal AI

More than 60 companies join CISA’s pledge to be Secure by Design 

And, Chuck Schumer says an AI roadmap is coming soon from the Senate AI working group.

More than 60 companies join CISA’s pledge to be Secure by Design

A podcast covering the latest news & trends facing top government leaders on topics such as technology, management & workforce. Hosted by Billy Mitchell on FedScoop and released every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

GSA Federal Acquisition Service’s Laura Stanton on STARS III, Alliant 3 and Polaris

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