Tag: General | Page 4

General Dynamics’ cloud contract with NGA moves forward after Leidos withdraws protest

March 19, 2022/in Mobile Security

WASHINGTON — The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency will begin a major upgrade of its cloud computing infrastructure after a protest over a $4.5 billion cloud-services contract was withdrawn by one of the competitors.

General Dynamics Information Technology on Dec. 8 was selected for a 10-year deal to modernize NGA’s cloud platform and data centers. The award was challenged by another competitor, Leidos, which filed a protest Dec. 28 with the Government Accountability Office.

General Dynamics on March 18 announced it won the contract. According to GAO, the protest filed by Leidos was withdrawn March 16, allowing NGA and General Dynamics to move forward with the work. Bid protests are common on government contracts this size, especially in the highly competitive cloud market.

A component of the U.S. intelligence community, NGA analyzes satellite imagery and other geospatial data for the U.S. military, allies and homeland security agencies.

NGA first solicited bids for the cloud services contract in 2019. The work covers a wide range of services in support of geospatial intelligence users, including the integration of commercial clouds, data center design and operations, mobile secure wireless across multiple networks and agency locations worldwide. Much of the new technology will support NGA’s new campus in St. Louis known as NGA West. The agency’s headquarters is in Northern Virginia in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

The $1.7 billion facility in north St. Louis has been under construction since November 2019 and NGA expects it will be open for business in 2025.

General Dynamics on Dec. 13 announced it is opening a new facility and geospatial innovation center at the Cortex in St. Louis.

NGA officials said upgrading its cloud computing and data infrastructure is a top priority for the agency as it tries to improve the quality and speed of services. A modern cloud enterprise, for example, will facilitate interoperability between the agency and commercial geospatial data providers.

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U.S. Military Has Acted Against Ransomware Groups, General Acknowledges

December 5, 2021/in Internet Security

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — The U.S. military has taken actions against ransomware groups as part of its surge against organizations launching attacks against American companies, the nation’s top cyberwarrior said on Saturday, the first public acknowledgment of offensive measures against such organizations.

Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency, said that nine months ago, the government saw ransomware attacks as the responsibility of law enforcement.

But the attacks on Colonial Pipeline and JBS beef plants demonstrated that the criminal organizations behind them have been “impacting our critical infrastructure,” General Nakasone said.

In response, the government is taking a more aggressive, better coordinated approach against this threat, abandoning its previous hands-off stance. Cyber Command, the N.S.A. and other agencies have poured resources into gathering intelligence on the ransomware groups and sharing that better understanding across the government and with international partners.

“The first thing we have to do is to understand the adversary and their insights better than we’ve ever understood them before,” General Nakasone said in an interview on the sidelines of the Reagan National Defense Forum, a gathering of national security officials.

General Nakasone would not describe the actions taken by his commands, nor what ransomware groups were targeted. But he said one of the goals was to “impose costs,” which is the term military officials use to describe punitive cyberoperations.

“Before, during and since, with a number of elements of our government, we have taken actions and we have imposed costs,” General Nakasone said. “That’s an important piece that we should always be mindful of.”

In September, Cyber Command diverted traffic around servers being used by the Russia-based REvil ransomware group, officials briefed on the operation have said. The operation came after government hackers from an allied country penetrated the servers, making it more difficult for the group to collect ransoms. After REvil detected the U.S. action, it shut down at least temporarily. That Cyber Command operation…

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The General of the Space Force Has Heard Your Jokes

November 22, 2021/in Internet Security

The U.S. Space Force—the sixth military service branch, which turns two years old next month—provides resources to protect and defend America’s satellites from the likes of the Chinese and the Russians. Space Force members also operate the Global Positioning System satellite constellation, providing G.P.S. services, for free, to everyone on the planet. All extremely important stuff. Yet the Space Force is considered something of a joke—the subject of late-night gibes and Internet memes. Critics have derided it as a vanity project of President Trump, a campaign-rally applause line somehow made real. Last year, when Trump unveiled the Space Force logo, which bears a striking resemblance to “Star Trek” ’s Starfleet insignia, Twitter lit up. (“Ahem,” tweeted the original “Star Trek” cast member George Takei. “We are expecting some royalties from this . . .”) Also undercutting the serious nature of the service: the Netflix comedy series “Space Force,” which stars Steve Carell as the branch’s bullheaded leader.

If any of this bothers General John W. (Jay) Raymond, the inaugural head of the Space Force, he doesn’t let on. The memeification of the force? “To me, it means that there’s a lot of excitement about space,” he said recently, sitting in a meeting room in Columbia University’s International Affairs Building. The four-star general, who is based at the Pentagon, was visiting between rounds of the Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge, a largely virtual competition in which thirty-two student teams from across the globe made policy recommendations in reaction to a hypothetical cyber-warfare scenario. (This one began with a breach made in “U.S. space sector ground stations’ systems,” an attack apparently undertaken by “Chinese state-sponsored actors.”) The event at Columbia, a partnership with a think tank called the Atlantic Council, was organized by the Digital and Cyber Group, which is run by graduate students at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

Raymond, who is fifty-nine, with a head shaved bald, pointed to a space-operations badge pinned to his jacket. He noted that the delta symbol at its center had been…

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