Countermeasures
A group of lawmakers recently forwarded correspondence to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and MITRE Corporation as a means of encouraging cybersecurity reforms.
The letters stem from an investigation last year into the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program. Signees include... Read More »
University scientists, working in conjunction with the government of Sierra Leone, have made progress on the PREDICT Ebola Host Project, with the discovery of an Ebola species in Sierra Leone’s bats before human or other animal infection.
It marks the first time scientists have discovered a... Read More »
An international conference held this week in Atlanta, hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Task Force for Global Health, Inc., sought to provide a space for the exchange of information related to infectious diseases.
The event is held every two to three years... Read More »
Four Senate Intelligence Committee members recently sent a letter to Tom Burt, president and CEO of Election Systems & Software (ES&S), urging the company to arrange independent testing of its election systems.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Kamala Harris (D-CA), James Lankford (R-OK), and Mark... Read More »
Sens. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Chris Coons (D-DE) introduced Monday legislation to deter and respond to state-sponsored malicious cyber activity against the United States.
The Cyber Deterrence and Response Act requires the administration to impose sanctions against all entities and persons... Read More »
Scientists from Imperial College London have riddled out the cause of one of the most pervasive viruses on earth: the enterovirus.
"There are many different types of enteroviruses that infect humans,” Dr. Margarita Pons-Salort, co-author of the research from Imperial's School of Public... Read More »
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced it has allocated $345 million for six fiscal year 2018 competitive preparedness grant programs. In June, more than $1.3 billion in noncompetitive grant funding was announced.
Preparedness grants are used to support the National... Read More »
Facebook and Microsoft met with the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) to explain recent actions they’ve taken to combat foreign threats.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of... Read More »
Senate lawmakers have passed the 2019 Defense Appropriations Act, which officials said gives American troops a raise while strengthening the military and boosting national security.
Officials said U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee,
spearheaded... Read More »
As San Antonio, Texas law enforcement returned or sought new homes for dogs from a shuttered dog training operation, one found a place with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
“It was a most unusual circumstance, and we were notified that there might be some dogs that met the... Read More »
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel at Washington Dulles International Airport recently used facial comparison biometric technology to foil an imposter’s effort to pose as a French citizen.
Officials said a 26-year-old man traveling from Sao Paulo, Brazil, presented a French passport... Read More »
Over the next 15 months, BAE Systems will conduct modernization efforts of the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, as part of a $146.3 million contract awarded by the U.S. Navy.
Repairs and alterations will take place at a shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia beginning January 2019. The hope is to... Read More »
Nearly a year after the destruction of Hurricane Irma, FEMA has awarded nearly $3 billion in disaster assistance to Florida recovery efforts, with the most recent case being more than $2.7 million earmarked for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department.
Around 777,000 households have received... Read More »
An amendment to the fiscal year 2019 Defense Appropriations bill would transfer $40 million to the U.S. Department of State for the Global Engagement Center (GEC) to expose and counter foreign influence and propaganda.
The $40 million was allotted for fiscal year 2018 and has yet to be... Read More »
The U.S. Department of Defense, along with the U.S. Air Force and Navy, completed a series of flight demonstrations last week of the Miniature Air Launched Decoy (MALD-X) missile.
The MALD-X missile is an air-launched decoy that mimics "friendly" aircraft to confuse enemy defensive systems. ... Read More »
Operation Darkness Falls, a joint operation targeting fentanyl and other drug distributors over the dark net, has resulted in several arrests associated to such bad actor behavior, including the most recent arrest of MH4Life, the fourth most prolific dark net fentanyl vendor in the world and the... Read More »
U.S. Border Patrol recently named Scott Luck as the agency’s new deputy chief.
Luck has been chief of the Law Enforcement Operations Directorate at the Border Patrol Headquarters in Washington, D.C., since 2014 and has served as the acting deputy chief since April 2017.
“I am deeply... Read More »
NATO announced this week that a new effort to provide air-to-ground precision-guided munitions to Allies has completed its first delivery.
Officials said NATO’s Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) received the first lot of Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs), which were acquired through a... Read More »
In an article written for the New England Journal of Medicine, field researchers from Central Africa pointed to rapid development as fueling disease outbreaks, due to a growing need for a robust, matching health care infrastructure.
While on the whole, such growth has been beneficial to the... Read More »
The strategy and national security development underway at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will now be lead by Chris Deeney, who joined the organization as its chief science and technology officer for national security matters.
A noted researcher and innovator in scientific... Read More »
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) component is aiding private business and academic partners transition from a reactive cyber defense approach to one that is collaborative, proactive and timely.
Officials said the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) could eliminate some of the manual... Read More »
In partnership with the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, Engility Holdings, Inc. awarded four scholarships for its CyberWarrior program this summer.
The awarded veterans come from various branches of the United States military -- Army, Air Force, and Navy -- and are currently located in... Read More »
A University of Texas--Arlington (UTA) researcher recently won a national grant award to continue his research on “superbugs” through mitochondria, discovering their defense mechanisms as well as new ways to boost immunity and improve infection resistance.
Over the next five years, UTA... Read More »
An amendment to the Defense-Labor-HHS appropriations bill would allow communities to utilize Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants to reinforce school safety infrastructure and technology.
“Americans have become all too familiar with the horror of school shootings,” U.S. Sen. Ted... Read More »
AECOM, a Los Angeles-based operational infrastructure firm, has begun construction of a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) at Fort Carson, Colorado, using Lockheed Martin’s GridStar Lithium energy storage system.
The 4.25 MW/8.5 MWh system is designed to reduce Fort Carson's energy costs... Read More »
Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) obtained SAFETY Act liability protections from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for the deployment of security measures designed to detect, deter, and recover from acts of terrorism.
The New Jersey-based company is the first public utility... Read More »
Experts determined during a recently completed hypothetical bioterrorism scenario, which imagines a smallpox outbreak originating in Fiji, that ample preparedness and response capabilities dictate whether a local outbreak is containable or more likely to become a global pandemic.
“Smallpox is... Read More »
An Indiana man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in a planned terrorist attack as well as distributing information on explosives.
Authorities said Marlonn Hicks, 31, of Crown Point, Indiana, has also been handed down three years of supervised release following his sentence... Read More »
In an article published in Eurosurveillance, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) determined that while listeria outbreaks are clustering with many cases going undetected, implementing a whole genome sequencing method could speed up the detection process.
In a study... Read More »
Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have modeled the workings of a bacterial pump mechanism that aids in the resistance to antibiotics.
These pumps spit out antibiotics before they can do any harm to the offending bacteria. The pump... Read More »
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently entered into a public-private partnership with Southwest Airlines Co. as part of the Donations Acceptance Program.
The program seeks tangible solutions to trade- and travel-enforcement challenges in both infrastructure and intellectual property... Read More »
DataRobot received Monday a $200,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) to begin testing a machine learning platform for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Global Travel Assessment System.
DataRobot, based in Tysons Corner, Va.,... Read More »
The Providence Fire Department in Rhode Island recently received a nearly $1 million federal grant award earmarked for the department’s safety and training, according to an announcement made by state and federal lawmakers last week.
Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) joined... Read More »
Following an announcement this month that a company called Defense Distributed would begin publishing blueprints for 3D printable firearms online, a group of Democratic senators are urging tech companies to ban publication of firearm blueprints on their platforms.
While the opponents in court... Read More »
Over the last 40 years, the parasite-driven disease Chagas has breached the borders of what was once its traditional territory, spreading from Latin America into the United States and Europe, according to a new report from the American Heart Association (AHA).
There are an estimated 300,000... Read More »
