Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
How government offices can secure operations post COVID-19 - Federal News Network
A 2018 survey showed that most states spend less than 3% of their IT budgets on cybersecurity. However, the mass pivot to remote work presented a combination of circumstances that highlighted how essential IT and security services are to state and local government functions.
The global health crisis caused the demand for online services to skyrocket. In some states, online unemployment applications surged by up to 3000% between January and March, and organizations transitioned to online collaboration platforms. It also spurred the faster deployment of resources like robotic process automation (RPA) ChatBots that functioned as the first line of engagement for many citizen services during lockdown. And while all of these features made governments more efficient in a crisis, they also opened them to more risk.
A recent threat report revealed that cybercriminals adapted to the remote working shift by targeting the home office environment with attacks, which prompted the need for advanced cybersecurity solutions.
While governments recognized IT and cybersecurity as critical elements during the recent pivot to remote telework and the expansion of digital services, in most cases, these departments only received the resources required to get the job done in the short-term. A looming budget deficit in state and local governments will heighten competition for resources in cash-strapped jurisdictions. This threatens the new-found alignment between senior leadership and IT departments, because when resources get scarce, support elements historically take extra cuts as organizations move to preserve their core mission functions.
While the private sector typically leads in the implementation of digital transformation technologies, the current crisis presents an opportunity for government to leverage lessons learned from the private sector’s experience and more effectively implement transformational technologies. Governments should also consider changes to their organizational practices to foster a stronger partnership between IT and security. Both IT and security should weigh in to frame programmatic options and shape the art of the possible for digital transformation within government.
Such collaboration between IT and security departments is imperative for shaping secure and cost-effective solutions for delivering government services—whether agencies return to the office setting or continue to work remotely.
Enhanced Security Measures are Vital to Continue Remote Work
As government offices evaluate continued large-scale remote work versus returning to the office setting, either option will require smart investment in technologies that cultivate a secure, digital business model. When procuring new technology, agencies should focus less on point products and more on flexible, integrated solutions that will increase productivity and generate a higher ROI from increasingly scarce resources.
As agencies evaluate the operational performance and security of their current remote telework capabilities and prepare to make any necessary changes, they should consider security-driven networking solutions. These solutions integrate security and networking to simplify management and maintain network agility while protecting the expanding digital edge surface. Government offices can adopt these integrated solutions to ensure that their network infrastructure remains efficient and allows long term flexibility without sacrificing performance. Agencies that decide to continue remote work should revisit endpoint security since they typically lack visibility and operational control of the remote user environment due to personal devices and non-employee users on these less-secure home networks. Even when the employee uses a government-issued computing device, this uncontrolled local IT environment can potentially introduce threats that could compromise government networks or data.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and virtual private networks (VPN) provide basic identity access management. Agencies should consider adding or strengthening endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools and web application firewalls to detect advanced threats and stop breaches and ransomware damage in real-time. Inspection of content is vital to ensure that threats are not entering the network in encrypted traffic. Security staff should check with network engineers to confirm that they did not turn off SSL inspection during the pivot to remote telework because of the latencies or performance bottlenecks it can introduce. And if they did, that capacity is being added to resume the inspection and mitigation of potential threats as part of ‘the new normal’ operating posture.
Additionally, agencies can apply simple zero-trust security principles to segment network architecture and continuously validate and monitor user and device access. This allows security administrators to give the least privilege necessary for a remote user to accomplish the task at hand, establish patterns of access on shared network resources, and permit cross-segment access only when and where it is needed. Agencies with more sensitive data can add more dynamic zero-trust access solutions for more comprehensive visibility and access control.
Returning to Work: Footprint, Function and Infrastructure
As agencies contemplate a return to the office, many find themselves re-examining their future office environment: the size, number, location and function of physical offices, and their existing IT infrastructure. Some organizations are consolidating the number of physical offices and moving away from dedicated office spaces assigned to specific employees in favor of ‘hoteling’ arrangements where employees use whatever desk is available. At the same time, other organizations have decided to reduce their offices’ size but increase their number and geographic distribution so that remote workers can more readily access them when needed. Some are also changing office functions from routine workplaces to places for collaboration or provision of services that cannot exist in the remote user environment.
Some organizations that were among the early returners to the office environment found that their existing networks didn’t have the bandwidth to support the collaboration platforms employees used to engage with remote colleagues or conduct socially-distanced in-house staff meetings.
This need for additional bandwidth coupled with the consolidation of locations can require changing an organization’s existing network topology away from fixed network infrastructure and dedicated bandwidth. This prospective change creates an opportunity for government IT administrators to deploy new networking solutions like SD-Branch or SD-WAN, improving performance and providing secure, centralized IT management for distributed networks while reducing overall costs.
Many organizations also learned that paying for dedicated phone lines on empty desks is not sustainable or cost-efficient, especially if they are contemplating a hoteling office environment. Replacing desktop phones with office-issued cell phones has cost and flexibility advantages. However, it also brings new challenges: deciding whether employees will be required to have a separate government-issued device and phone number for official use or use a single device for both work and personal purposes. Agencies must also contend with the associated policies on generating and retaining official records from such devices.
With no clear end in sight to the COVID-19 pandemic, state and local government offices are also considering hybrid work environments where some employees work remotely and some work on-site, or where most or all employees alternate between remote and on-site presence. The private sector is already exploring hiring employees who are not physically proximate to any office, expecting that they will travel periodically for face-to-face interaction with their colleagues. Such an option might be equally compelling for governments that face a shortage of talent and labor when they are limited to hiring solely from their locality.
In short, the pivot to remote telework has brought significant operational and resource challenges to state and local governments. Still, it also presents the opportunity to accelerate government IT transformation to a more efficient, flexible and secure operating posture as part of the post-COVID “new normal.”
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December 29, 2020 at 11:31PM
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How government offices can secure operations post COVID-19 - Federal News Network
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DARPA’s contribution to JADC2: ‘Mosaic’ warfare - Federal News Network
Joint All-Domain Command and Control — the Pentagon’s vision to stitch together its weapons platforms and communications systems into a seamless “internet of military things” — is likely to begin delivering some of its first capabilities by next year. And at least in the early going, the architecture that underpins that interconnectedness will need to be stitched together by hand.
But the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a far different vision for how JADC2 could be operating as soon as five years from now. Under a concept called Mosaic Warfare, aided by artificial intelligence and a new cadre of technical experts, new systems of systems could be brought together on demand, depending on what a particular mission requirement called for.
And although DoD is already thinking about JADC2 as a system of systems, the Mosaic concept is radically different from the contemporary approach, which Timothy Grayson, the director of DARPA’s strategic technology office, describes as more like a jigsaw puzzle.
“What we’re doing with Mosaic is trying to bust up monolithic architectures and make them into fluid dynamic types of warfighting constructs,” Grayson told a recent conference hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association. “We like to contrast that architecture with a jigsaw puzzle where all the different systems are carefully architected with well-defined interfaces that have to go together one particular way. The mosaic metaphor says I’ve got a collection of tiles, and they might be all different kinds of colors and shapes, but I can select the tiles that I want in a much more flexible way — not a predefined structure — to build that mosaic artwork.”
DARPA has been working on the Mosaic concept for several years, but now believes it dovetails neatly with what the Pentagon wants to achieve with JADC2. Grayson said if the toolkits the agency is working on now prove to be successful, within the next five years, commanders at the tactical edge could be constructing their own mission-tailored systems-of-systems to meet any particular mission objective. That’s what DARPA refers to as “wave two” of Mosaic.
In “wave three” — perhaps ten years from now — the agency envisions that the Defense acquisition system and its priorities will have evolved to the point where the military’s inventory of capabilities includes many more small, tailorable systems that can be produced quickly and relatively cheaply, then brought together on an as-needed basis.
“I think this is very consistent with a lot of things we’ve heard from the Air Force recently on things like digital engineering, and the approach the Air Force is taking on Next-Generation Air Dominance,” Grayson said. “If the notion is filling the palette with additional mosaic tiles, that gives me a lot of options for going out and buying things in different ways that have capability less than what a monolithic platform would need. I might need more of them, but I might buy them in small tranches, and then constantly be spiraling and turning. I don’t know how exactly what that future acquisition model looks like, but I would encourage industry to start thinking about that now.”
And in the shorter term, for the Mosaic concept to come to fruition, the military will need to rethink some of its own manpower concepts, Grayson said. He said he believes the services will need to develop specialized units as part of wave two, to actually employ the tools DARPA is building at the tactical edge.
“That force structure doesn’t exist today, and it includes what I like to call figuratively a combat support Geek Squad,” he said. “We need to think about who is going to be that combat support element who is going to support all of these Mosaic tools.”
Grayson said DARPA has already done some early work to study what that workforce could look like, but that conceptually, the teams might operate in much the same way software experts work under a DevSecOps methodology. Some of the concepts were used in the Air Force’s recent demonstration of its Advanced Battle Management System, when the service employed a DARPA tool called System-of-systems Technology Integration Tool Chain for Heterogeneous Electronic Systems (STITCHES).
As the acronym implies, the toolkit’s main purpose is to translate and stitch together various messages from different military hardware, such as sensors and fire control systems. But it requires trained operators.
“Imagine you’ve got an ops floor or a squadron ready room someplace, and the warfighters are there building the next day’s battle plan, very similar to what we do today. But a lot of building that mission plan involves wiring things together in different ways,” Grayson said. “So the geeks would be sitting in the back room right off the ready room, and they’re using things like the STITCHES tool, knocking out what amount to the mission data files, based upon that package that the warfighters just designed. And then ultimately, they take that stack of software and load it onto the jets or the other weapon systems. That’s the rough top level vision.”
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December 29, 2020 at 07:38PM
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DARPA’s contribution to JADC2: ‘Mosaic’ warfare - Federal News Network
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The brain network driving changes in consciousness - EurekAlert
The loss and return of consciousness is linked to the same network of brain regions for both sleep and anesthesia, according to new research published in JNeurosci.
The biological basis of consciousness has confounded scientists for centuries. Our experimental techniques falter, as the effects of sleep and anesthetic drugs alter brain activity beyond changes in consciousness. In addition, behavior does not always reveal someone's state of consciousness. An unresponsive person might still be aware of their surroundings (connected), or unaware but still experiencing their internal world (disconnected).
Scheinin et al. sought networks associated with human consciousness by measuring the brain activity of adult males with PET as they fell asleep and went under anesthesia. The research team woke participants mid-experiment to interview them and confirm their state of connectedness. Changes in connectedness corresponded to the activity of a network comprised of regions deep inside the brain: the thalamus, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, and angular gyri. These regions exhibited less blood flow when a participant lost connectedness and more blood flow when they regained it. The pattern held true for both sleep and anesthesia, indicating the changes corresponded to connectedness rather than the effects of sleep or drugs, and that the network may be imperative for human consciousness.
###
Manuscript title: Foundations of Human Consciousness: Imaging the Twilight Zone
About JNeurosci
JNeurosci, the Society for Neuroscience's first journal, was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.
About The Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and over 130 chapters worldwide.
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
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December 29, 2020 at 01:03AM
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The brain network driving changes in consciousness - EurekAlert
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MineralAnswers.com Launches Community - A Social Network for Mineral and Royalty Owners - PRNewswire
AUSTIN, Texas, Dec. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- MineralAnswers.com today announced its new social network, Community. Aimed at providing a peer-to-peer as well as peer-to-expert community for mineral and royalty owners.
Community gives MineralAnswers.com users a way to ask questions that can be answered by other owners on the platform who may have experience, insight or information on the topic. This is the first social network targeting the energy industry, built on top of MineralAnswers.com's extensive energy regulatory information, making it easy to look up and share data to aid a discussion.
"This mineral and royalty owner community is one of the core pillars of the platform we envisioned when starting back in 2019," said Jeff Chambers, founder and CEO of MineralAnswers.com. "The energy industry has been slow to leverage digital platforms, social engagement and basic transparency relative to other industries like travel, entertainment or e-commerce. We're happy to be building a platform where not only do we catch up, but we define the new standard for these areas in mineral ownership, management and transactions in the years ahead."
MineralAnswers.com started as a free service that uses data from the platform to provide members answers to a wide array of energy and mineral rights questions. The community now connects members directly so they can share personal insights for enhanced and tailored responses to their specific queries.
"Building a truly data-driven social platform, which is now a reality for millions of mineral and royalty owners, lays the foundation for many advancements to come as we progress on our mission of becoming the world's leading energy knowledge platform," said Chambers.
About MineralAnswers.com
MineralAnswers.com sees a world where every major energy decision is made based on informed insights available to everyone. The company is on a mission to be the go-to knowledge platform for all energy information. Founded in 2019, MineralAnswers.com is headquartered in Austin, TX. For more information, visit www.mineralanswers.com.
SOURCE Mineral Answers, Inc.
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December 29, 2020 at 07:30PM
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MineralAnswers.com Launches Community - A Social Network for Mineral and Royalty Owners - PRNewswire
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ACC Network's Extensive Surrounding Coverage of Clemson and Notre Dame in the 2021 College Football Playoff Semifinals - ESPN Press Room
- Week-long CFP Semifinal Coverage on Packer and Durham and The Huddle
- More Than 14 Hours of Dedicated Programming Friday
- Andrea Adelson and Kelsey Riggs On Site in Dallas and New Orleans
- Hometown Radio Alternate Viewing Experience
With the ACC having two teams – No. 2 Clemson and No. 4 Notre Dame – in the College Football Playoff Semifinals for the first time since the inception of the Playoff, ACC Network, the 24/7 national platform dedicated to ACC sports, will have wide-ranging surrounding coverage of both the College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Rose Bowl Game Presented by Capital One and College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Allstate Sugar Bowl all week long and as part of ESPN’s MegaCast offerings on Friday, Jan. 1.
ACCN will have more than 14 hours of dedicated programming on Friday, Jan. 1 surrounding both CFP Semifinal games as No. 4 Notre Dame meets No. 1 Alabama in the Rose Bowl Game (4 p.m. ET, ESPN) and No. 2 Clemson takes on No. 3 Ohio State in the Allstate Sugar Bowl (8 p.m. ET, ESPN). ACCN’s signature studio shows Packer and Durham and The Huddle will have additional coverage all week as well as pregame, halftime and postgame coverage on Friday beginning at 11 a.m. ET.
Packer and Durham
ACCN’s signature morning show Packer and Durham will have extensive coverage throughout the week during its traditional timeslot from 7-10 a.m., before moving to 11 a.m. on Friday to kick off CFP Semifinals pre-game coverage. Hosts Mark Packer and Wes Durham will preview the semifinal games and have a bevy of guests throughout the week, while also digging into the biggest stats that could be the difference in winning and losing for both teams. Additionally, press conferences with head coaches Dabo Swinney and Brian Kelly will be featured live on Thursday morning between 9:30-10 a.m. The duo will also provide postgame reaction and analysis of all of the ACC’s participating bowl teams throughout the postseason.
The Huddle
The Huddle, ACCN’s signature football show, will be live Monday and Tuesday from 10 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. with coverage from participating coaches and players press conferences from Media Days. Host Kelsey Riggs along with Mark Richt and EJ Manuel will have instant reaction from Media Days and will breakdown all of the storylines heading into Friday’s games.
Monday’s press conference lineup features Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly, Tigers’ defensive coordinator Brent Venables and Fighting Irish offensive coordinator Tommy Rees. Clemson defensive players and Notre Dame offensive players will also take to the podium, including Tyler Davis, Myles Murphy, James Skalski, Baylon Spector, Mike Jones and Nolan Turner of Clemson, and Tommy Kraemer, Kyren Williams, Ben Skowronek, Michael Mayer, Liam Eichenberg and Ian Book of Notre Dame.
Tuesday’s slate of coordinators and players includes Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator Clark Lea and Fighting Irish defensive players Drew White, Kyle Hamilton, Nick McCloud, Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa, Shaun Crawford and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, as well as Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott and Tigers offensive players Trevor Lawrence, Travis Etienne, Amari Rodgers, Cornell Powell, Braden Galloway and Matt Bockhorst.
Game day features a two-hour The Huddle pre-game show with host Jordan Cornette in the network’s Bristol headquarters and Eric Mac Lain, EJ Manuel and Coach Richt utilizing their live-from-home kits. The quartet will preview the CFP Semifinal match-ups and cover the storylines from 2-4 p.m. leading into Rose Bowl Game. The Huddle will also provide halftime and postgame analysis of both games.
Adelson and Riggs On Site in Dallas and New Orleans
ACCN will have a pair of reporters on site in Dallas and New Orleans covering on all of the happenings in advance of the CFP Semifinals. Kelsey Riggs will be in Dallas reporting from the Rose Bowl Game on Notre Dame, while Andrea Adelson will be in New Orleans for the Allstate Sugar Bowl covering Clemson. Both Adelson and Riggs will contribute with live reports on The Huddle.
Hometown Radio
Fans can opt for alternate coverage on ACCN of both the Rose Bowl Game and Allstate Sugar Bowl when the ESPN game telecast is paired with Notre Dame’s and Clemson’s radio networks, respectively. The Notre Dame Radio Network featuring Paul Burmeister, Ryan Harris and Jack Nolan will be paired with the ESPN telecast beginning at 4 p.m., while the Clemson Tigers Network powered by JMI Sports featuring Don Munson, Tim Bourret, Brad Scott and Reggie Merriweather will be live at 8 p.m.
ACC Network’s Surrounding Coverage of the College Football Playoff Semifinal Games
| Date | Time (ET) | Programming | Network |
| Mon, Dec. 28 | 7 a.m. | Packer and Durham | ACCN |
| 10 a.m. | The Huddle | ACCN | |
| Tue, Dec. 29 | 7 a.m. | Packer and Durham | ACCN |
| 10 a.m. | The Huddle | ACCN | |
| Wed, Dec. 30 | 7 a.m. | Packer and Durham | ACCN |
| Thu, Dec. 31 | 7 a.m. | Packer and Durham | ACCN |
| Fri, Jan. 1 | 11 a.m. | Packer and Durham | ACCN |
| 2 p.m. | The Huddle | ACCN | |
| 4 p.m. | College Football Playoff Semifinal at the
Rose Bowl Game Presented by Capital One No. 1 Alabama vs No. 4 Notre Dame |
ESPN | |
| 4 p.m. | Notre Dame Hometown Radio | ACCN | |
| Halftime | The Huddle | ACCN | |
| Postgame | The Huddle | ACCN | |
| 8 p.m. | College Football Playoff Semifinal at the
Allstate Sugar Bowl No. 2 Clemson vs No. 3 Ohio State |
ESPN | |
| 8 p.m. | Clemson Hometown Radio | ACCN | |
| Halftime | The Huddle | ACCN | |
| Postgame | The Huddle | ACCN |
About ACC Network
Owned and operated by ESPN in partnership with the Atlantic Coast Conference, ACC Network (ACCN) and its digital platform ACCNX is a 24/7 national network dedicated to ACC sports that launched on August 22, 2019. ACCN features regular-season and tournament games from across the conference’s 27 sponsored sports plus a complement of news and information shows and original programming. ESPN has been televising ACC content since 1979 and has exclusive rights to every conference-controlled game across all sports and championships.
Carriage agreements are in place with the following video providers: AT&T TV, AT&T TV NOW, Cox, DIRECTV, DISH Network, fuboTV, Google Fiber, Hulu Live TV, Optimum, Sling TV, Spectrum TV, Suddenlink, TVision, Verizon Fios, YouTube TV, members of the NCTC, NRTC and Vivicast, among others. All ACCN games will also be available on the ESPN app to authenticated subscribers. Fans interested in learning more about ACCN can visit www.GetACCN.com.
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December 28, 2020 at 10:45PM
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ACC Network's Extensive Surrounding Coverage of Clemson and Notre Dame in the 2021 College Football Playoff Semifinals - ESPN Press Room
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