With an onslaught of new technologies ever present on the horizon, the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) is working to make sense of what technologies will work for them, not only in the traditional warfighting domains, but also in cyber—the new domain. Right now, they have a long list of priorities associated with modernizing the network, meeting standards and mandates, and fielding new capabilities.
big data
March 16, 2018
ECS Federal LLC, Fairfax, Virginia, was awarded a $9,529,017 modification to provide analysis of large structured and unstructured data sets. The company will assist the Army in providing insight to the warfigher on the tactical edge using modern computational and algorithmic techniques through creation of a prototype environment with prototype technologies, DOD said. The goal is to uncover key insights with large data sets using robust ontologies created through data science partnership with DOD research laboratories and universities. Work will be performed in Fairfax, Virginia, with an estimated completion date of September 28, 2019.
February 28, 2018
In a $350 million deal, San Francisco, California-based Splunk Inc. will purchase Phantom Cyber Corporation, a Palo Alto, California-based cyber security firm specializing in security orchestration, automation and response, known as SOAR. Splunk will acquire Phantom using a combination of cash and stock. The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2018, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory reviews. Oliver Friedrichs, Founder and CEO, Phantom will report to Haiyan Song, senior vice president and general manager of security markets, Splunk.
March 1, 2018
Part of the Office of Naval Research’s efforts in command, control, communications and computers is to provide key analytical tools to planners, analysts and commanders swamped by data. To that end, the office, known as the ONR, is conducting basic and applied research in applications that will cut maneuver planning time, expand access to data, enhance analytical processing and improve predictions. The tools are meant to improve decision making across antisubmarine warfare, integrated air and missile defense, electromagnetic maneuver warfare, and expeditionary and integrated fires missions.
December 22, 2017
In 2016, big data software company Splunk promised to donate a minimum of $100 million in software licenses, training, support and education to nonprofit organizations and educational institutions over the next 10 years. The company’s Splunk4Good initiative supports nonprofit organizations, academic research and social improvements.
September 7, 2017
Officials from across the U.S. intelligence community are calling for reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to collect data on non-U.S. citizens on foreign soil, as Congress debates whether to reauthorize, reform or outright reject it.
Multiple officials from multiple agencies touted the benefits of Section 702 during the 2017 Intelligence and National Security Summit, which was held Sept. 6-7 in Washington, D.C.
June 28, 2017
Senior intelligence officials identified the increasing amount of data and how to handle it as the one of the largest challenges the intelligence community faces today. “We are collecting more data than we can effectively process,” said Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Director Lt. Gen Vincent Stewart, USMC. “What we process, we struggle to make sense of, and what we understand, we can’t effectively disseminate across a global enterprise to ensure it helps drive critical decision making.”
June 29, 2017
U.S. Army officials expect that by this fall, they will have formal approval of a rapid prototyping process for acquiring cyber and electronic warfare prototypes assessed during the just-completed Cyber Quest 2017 exercise at Fort Gordon, Georgia.
Army officials describe Cyber Quest as an annual cyber and electronic warfare exploration and collaboration event hosted by the Cyber Center of Excellence. This is the second year for the event.
May 2, 2017
The U.S. Defense Department has initiated a market research effort to identify potential industry sources under a potential five-year, $325 million acquisition program for technical support services. The market research effort could potentially lead to a contract award this fiscal year.
April 28, 2017
Forecasting data collected during the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity's (IARPA’s) Aggregative Contingent Estimation (ACE) program by team Good Judgment is now available for use by the public and the research community via
April 20, 2017
Organizations today must deal with an avalanche of big data and the advanced computing requirements that are driven by so much data. To cover the accelerated speeds and throughput needs they increasingly face, their information systems require increased network speeds and upgrades as well as improved security and monitoring tools.
April 17, 2017
The cannonade of small satellites hovering above the Earth is creating a dilemma for government and industry alike: how to process enormous amounts of data sent to the ground.
Collecting information isn’t the hard part, nor is transmitting it, experts say. What vexes intelligence analysts the most is not being able to make heads or tails of petabyte upon petabyte of data. But the government seeks help from the commercial world to make that happen.
February 13, 2017
Behind the Science is an occasional series of blogs focusing on the people advancing science and technology.
George and Marlene Bachand, a married couple working at Sandia National Laboratories, have partnered on more science projects than they can recall.
February 1, 2017
Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are searching for partners to apply technology for encrypting text within synthetic DNA. The encryption is far stronger than conventional technology and practically impossible to break, researchers say.
In September, the Sandia team wrapped up a three-year effort titled Synthetic DNA for Highly Secure Information Storage and Transmission. The project developed a new way of storing and encrypting information using DNA. The work was funded through Sandia’s internal Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.
February 2, 2017
Organizations constantly are seeking new ways to address workload-specific storage demands in terms of performance and capacity while also meeting service-level agreements, response-time objectives and recovery-point objectives.
Many information technology operations are inspired by successful hyperscale organizations such as Facebook, Google and Amazon. However, most enterprises lack the scale and substantial development and operations commitment necessary to deploy software-defined storage infrastructure in the same ways. Hyperscale economics also typically don’t work out at smaller scale, resulting in poor utilization or unacceptable reliability issues.
January 1, 2017
Advances in genomics, medical sensors and data-driven health care increasingly are enabling doctors and patients to make personalized and targeted care decisions. But the effectiveness of these precision medicine capabilities depends on critical cybersecurity components to protect patient privacy and the integrity of patient data.
December 1, 2016
Researchers are developing an open source machine-learning framework that allows a distributed network of computers to process vast amounts of data as efficiently and effectively as supercomputers and to better predict behaviors or relationships. The technology has a broad range of potential applications, including commercial, medical and military uses.
Anyone who needs to analyze a few trillion datasets can use a supercomputer or distribute the problem among processors on a large network. The former option is not widely available, and the latter can be complicated.
November 29, 2016
The Kill Chain Integration Branch at Hanscom Air Force Base has begun an experimentation campaign, known as Data-to-Decisions, to look at ways to provide warfighters data in the fastest and most efficient way possible. The campaign is in its early stages but, according to officials, already showing the potential for favorable results.
November 1, 2016
A cluster of macrotechnologies offers the potential for a new wave of innovation that revolutionizes all aspects of government, military and civilian life. Many of these technologies are familiar, and their effects are well-known. What may not be common knowledge is that the more these technologies advance, the more their synergies increase.
July 6, 2016
Cybersecurity today is less about stopping adversaries from breaching networks and more about damage control once they get in, an adjustment that has government and businesses embracing a new trend that merges security and big data.
This confluence gives rise to a growing practice called threat hunting, the act of aggressively going after cyber adversaries rather than waiting to learn they have breached security perimeters.
While growing in popularity, a recent survey of security experts notes that a significant portion of threat hunting is still being performed ad hoc, negating benefits of a repeatable processes and a waste of resources in trying unverified methods that provide minimal value.
