• DHS Awards $4.2 Million to U.S. Small Business for Homeland Security R&D

    DHS S&T announced the award of 29 competitive research contracts to 25 small businesses across the United States to participate in Phase I of the DHS Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. Each project will receive up to $150,000 from the DHS SBIR Program to conduct proof-of-concept research over a five-month period to address specific homeland security technology needs.

  • At the Critical Intersection of Public Health and Homeland Security

    Promoting wellbeing of “communities and families” makes the nation safer, says the new chief medical officer for DHS. “I think what this pandemic has shown us is that if we think about the need to build systems that promote the health and wellbeing of communities and families, we’re going to be better off as a nation,” he says. “We’re going to be safer.”

  • Biden to Quadruple Refugee Cap

    U.S. President Joe Biden, who initially decided to keep intact his predecessor’s historically low number of annual refugee admissions, Monday announced he is quadrupling this year’s total. Two weeks ago, the White House announced that the cap for the current fiscal year would be kept at 15,000, the level set by former President Donald Trump. That announcement came despite Biden’s promise that after his inauguration in January he would significantly expand the program.

  • Georgia State’s Designated National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research, Education

    The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have designated Georgia State University as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research and a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education through 2025.

  • DHS Announces Domestic Violent Extremism Review at DHS

    DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday announced an internal review to address the threat of domestic violent extremism within DHS. A cross-departmental working group comprising senior officials will begin a comprehensive review of how to best prevent, detect, and respond to threats related to domestic violent extremism within DHS. 

  • Students Collaborate to Solve Homeland Security Challenges

    In the parlance of homeland security, soft targets are places that are easily accessible to the general public and relatively unprotected. Last month, innovative students from Arizona State University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas competed in “Hardening Soft Targets” – a DHS-sponsored 3-day event in which students worked directly with experts from DHS, the Phoenix Police Department, industry leaders, and academics.

  • Cybersecurity Tech for Emergency Communications Centers

    DHS S&T is expanding pilot testing of a technology to improve the cybersecurity defenses of the nation’s emergency communications infrastructure. Odenton, Md.-based SecuLore Solutions in the research and development (R&D) of a cybersecurity defense solution based on predictive analytics and cyber data that helps detect and mitigate cybersecurity attacks against legacy emergency communications systems and new Next Generation 911 (NG911) and Internet Protocol-based technologies.

  • Monitoring Current and Future Biological Threats

    DHS S&T has awarded $199,648 to Mesur.io Inc., for analysis and reporting of outbreak-related data. The Mesur.io project proposes to adapt their Earthstream Platform to provide DHS and NBIC with data that tracks metrics related to an outbreak or emergence to predict various risks of a biological threat.

  • U.S. Set to Retaliate against Russia, China for Massive Cyber Attacks

    Senior officials in the Biden administration on Friday said that the administration is finalizing its decision on how to retaliate forcefully for state-sponsored hacking, as fears in the United States and Western Europe are growing over the consequences of two recent major cyberattacks. Officials said that U.S. retaliatory measures – “some seen, some unseen” – will be coming in matter of weeks, nit months.

  • Employing Science to Secure the Homeland

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) recently outlined the various scientific initiatives and project it has been engaged in to improve homeland security and bolster national security. The brief makes for an interesting reading.

  • Two R&D Projects to Enhance Mobile Network Traffic Security

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are jointly announcing the final two research and development (R&D) awards for the newly launched Secure and Resilient Mobile Network Infrastructure (SRMNI) project.

  • How Biden’s Cyber Strategy Echoes Trump’s

    On March 3, the Biden administration released its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Herb Lin writes that the interim guidance document is, by definition, a work in progress, and one would expect a final guidance document to be roughly consistent with the interim guidance but also to contain a more substantial elaboration on the interim guidance. With two exceptions — emphasizing diversity in the national talent base and strongly implies government investment in cybersecurity –”all other areas addressed in the Biden interim guidance, I believe the statements are substantially the same. If this is true, it suggests great continuity in cyber policy and strategy between administrations as different as Biden’s and Trump’s. Of course, the Trump National Cyber Strategy wasn’t all that different from Obama’s cyber strategy, either.”

  • Cyber Workforce Protecting U.S. National Security

    The Defense Department’s cyber workforce is tasked with defending virtually every system that the department relies on to protect national security.

  • Biden Orders Review to Bolster Supply Chain Resiliency

    President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday to formally order a 100-day government review of global supply chains and potential U.S. vulnerabilities in key industries including computer chips, electric vehicle batteries, pharmaceuticals and critical minerals used in electronics. On top of the 100-day review of these four key industries, Biden’s order also directs yearlong reviews for six sectors: defense, public health, information technology, transportation, energy and food production.

  • Four Ways the Biden Administration Can Revamp Disaster Management

    In the United States, 2020 had more billion-dollar disasters than any other year in recorded history, even without accounting for the COVID-19pandemic. This is part of a growing trend of more powerful disasters, such as forest fires or hurricanes, across more susceptible areas. This vulnerability is becoming understood to include a combination of the built environment, governance, and underlying social vulnerability. Among federal agencies in the United States, disasters are managed by as many as 90 different programs across 20 agencies. These programs are an uneven patchwork, leaving significant gaps in some areas, and overlapping responsibilities and authorities in others.