Judge Warns Government on Anti-Deficiency Act Claims in Shutdown Lawsuits

A U.S. District Court judge said the Justice Department will have a “steep uphill battle” to defend the Treasury Department’s decision to recall thousands of Internal Revenue Service employees to process tax refunds during the partial government shutdown. At a status hearing to discuss the next steps in three lawsuits challenging the legality of the Trump administration’s decision-making in forcing more than 400,000 federal employees to work without pay during the 35-day lapse in appropriations, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said he would not prejudge the issues in the case, but noted his “serious concerns” with the government’s position on some issues.

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Emerging Technology

OPEXUS Government Process Management Platform eCASE® Attains StateRAMP Moderate Authorization

Business Wire | September 14, 2023

OPEXUS, formerly known as AINS, LLC, and leader in government process management software, today announces it has attained StateRAMP authorization for eCASE®, a built-for-government case management solution that streamlines workflows and accelerates key government processes. StateRAMP was established in 2020 to efficiently verify that service providers meet the cloud security standards required to do business with state and local governments. The StateRAMP verification process, built upon the widely accepted National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-53 framework, and independently audited by a reputable third-party assessment organization (3PAO), ensures the highest level of security and compliance. Achievement of this authorization underscores the company's dedication to supporting state and local governments with cutting-edge technology that enhances productivity, flexibility, and collaboration. With this certification, OPEXUS will empower state, local, and educational (SLED) agencies to elevate trust in public institutions with dynamic case management and rapid application development technology that was purpose-built for the government. OPEXUS supports public sector human resources teams by providing an umbrella of workforce management tools that include eCASE® EEO/eComplaint and eCASE® ER/LR. The company also offers eCASE® Audit and eCASE® Investigations, case-management tools built specifically for government auditors and investigators. "State and local government agencies experience many challenges keeping pace with private sector advancements in technology, cyber security, and data security software – from long purchasing timelines to budget constraints, but they cannot compromise on security,” said Howard Langsam, CEO of OPEXUS. “By demonstrating our security qualifications through StateRAMP, we are removing one more barrier to these agencies being able to purchase cloud solutions that meet both their operational and security requirements.” In 2014, OPEXUS attained FedRAMP authorization at the moderate level for its eCASE®, eCASE® COTS and FOIAXpress® solutions, including Audit, Investigations, Employee & Labor Relations, and EEO Complaints. The company has also achieved Defense Information Systems Agency Impact Level 2 (DISA IL2), FISMA, NIST 800-53 Revision 4, and FIPS certifications. About OPEXUS Get government unstuck with OPEXUS. OPEXUS is the leader in FedRAMP-certified government process management software with more than 30 years of experience supporting public institutions. The company brings operational excellence to governments’ middle office so agencies can focus on the critical work of mission delivery. OPEXUS empowers 100,000 government users with exceptional technology experiences and a built-for-government product suite, including solutions for audit, investigations, correspondence, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and employee and labor relations. Located in the heart of Washington D.C., OPEXUS works with more than 150 public institutions in the US and Canada.

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Emerging Technology

Aalyria and Second Front Partner to Expedite Availability of Spacetime for Government Use

Business Wire | October 17, 2023

Aalyria, a dynamic startup commercializing advanced networking and communications technologies acquired from Google, has formed a strategic alliance with Second Front Systems. This collaboration paves the way for accelerated deployment of Aalyria’s Spacetime network orchestration platform within government sectors. The integration with Second Front's trusted Game Warden platform makes Spacetime accessible at Department of Defense Impact Levels 4 and 5 (IL4 and IL5). Embracing this modern risk management approach means the ability to focus on maintaining security and risk management frameworks without significantly impacting development teams or timelines – a leap from traditional authorization processes. Aalyria is also on track to extend Spacetime's reach to IL6 and Top Secret environments in the near future. Spacetime is an advanced software platform designed for orchestrating and managing complex networks of satellites, ground stations, aircraft, ships, urban meshes, and more. The software is being adopted across the public and private sector, including in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit, Intelsat, Rivada Space Networks, Anduril, Leidos, the U.S. Navy, and others. “Working with Second Front enables us to quickly deploy to more secure environments and serve our growing customer base,” said Chris Taylor, CEO of Aalyria. “The demand for our Spacetime solution by an array of mission owners across the defense and intelligence spectrum made partnering with Second Front an easy choice – the team’s proficiency in this space and the speed at which they work is a great match for Aalyria.” “Aalyria is an absolute trailblazer in network orchestration and Second Front is thrilled to be collaborating,” said Tyler Sweatt, CEO at Second Front. “We share a passion for ensuring the most innovative solutions are made available to defense and national security end users, so this was a natural fit. Second Front is honored to play a role in enabling Aalyria to rapidly deploy their amazing solutions to the world’s most mission critical customer base.” The initial collaboration will bring Aalryia’s technologies to ILs 4 and 5 and is part of a broader plan to bring their solutions to a diverse combination of advanced networks in the near future. Aalyria and Second Front will focus on Aalryia’s TRL 9 Spacetime offering – a product validated with greater than 2 million hours of lights-out orchestration of aerospace nodes. It is designed to operate networks that include global scale dynamic physical link topologies and highly-directional steerable beams across land, sea, air, and space. About Second Front Systems Second Front Systems (2F) fast-tracks government access to disruptive, commercially-proven software as a service (SaaS) applications for national security missions. Leading software providers—ranging from publicly traded defense contractors to startups—and government agencies trust 2F’s Game Warden DevSecOps platform and secure cloud hosting environment to accelerate their delivery and harness the cloud revolution at scale. Founded by former U.S. Marines, this public benefit, venture-backed software company is driven by firsthand experience of the dangers outdated technology poses in combat. About Aalyria Aalyria is a global advanced networking and laser communications technologies company. It is revolutionizing connectivity on Earth and in Space. Its Tightbeam product – the world’s first atmospheric corrected coherent free space optics solution – and Spacetime – the only all-orbit, all-domain, software defined network orchestration platform – are helping commercial and government customers reimagine business and mission models to make their assets more effective, efficient, and profitable.

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Cybersecurity

SentinelOne® Extends Power of the Singularity™ DataLake to Federal Agencies

Business Wire | October 10, 2023

Managing and analyzing security data is an overwhelming task - particularly for federal agencies where budgets are tight and cyber talent is in short supply. To help ease the burden, SentinelOne, a global leader in autonomous cybersecurity, is making Singularity™ DataLake, the industry’s most performant security data solution, and only FedRAMP-Authorized offering that unifies visibility, detection, and response across the entire security infrastructure, available through its FedRAMP Authorized platform. Federal Agencies can now easily access the one-of-a-kind cloud-native solution to gain a comprehensive view of their security data and quickly uncover and respond to threats in real-time. “The amount of data that federal agencies are required to collect, store, correlate, and analyze to defend against increasingly sophisticated and malicious attacks is massive and rapidly growing,” said Dale McCloskey, Federal Sales Vice President, SentinelOne. “The Singularity DataLake provides powerful cross-platform security analytics and intelligence they can use to gain the visibility needed to do it.” As the industry’s first and only unified, cloud delivered solution for OMB M-21-31 compliance, the SentinelOne Singularity DataLake combines SentinelOne and third-party security data visibility into a single console. Using the solution, federal cyber analysts can: Seamlessly ingest any data type, structured or unstructured, and fuse it with endpoint, cloud workload and user data to provide comprehensive visibility in a single, unified interface. Efficiently search, query and leverage AI-powered analytics to speed data-driven decisions. Reduce detection and response times to stop attacks faster. Achieve OMB M-21-31 compliance with cost-effective, long-term storage (up to 30 months) across endpoint detection and response (EDR) telemetry as well as other data sources. Retain existing SOC workflows through open, built-in security ecosystem integrations to deliver increased visibility and security context while reducing costs and operational resource burdens. “The future of cybersecurity for federal agencies will be driven by data and the power of analytics to extract actionable and intelligent security insights at scale and with SentinelOne Singularity DataLake, they can deliver it today,” said McCloskey. About SentinelOne SentinelOne is the leader in autonomous cybersecurity. SentinelOne’s Singularity™ Platform detects, prevents, and responds to cyber attacks at machine speed, empowering organizations to secure endpoints, cloud workloads, containers, identities, and mobile and network-connected devices with speed, accuracy and simplicity. Over 11,000 customers, including Fortune 10, Fortune 500, and Global 2000 companies, as well as prominent governments, trust SentinelOne to secure the future today.

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