Though the Defense Department managed to go unscathed through the Crowdstrike outage, it remains on the alert

• The Defense Department generally escaped the effects of Friday’s global internet problems. That’s according to Gen. C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum that the botched Crowdstrike update didn’t impact DoD operations, but that it’s a reminder that the department needs to be ready to respond to cyber incidents.
  (Aspen Security Forum - YouTube)
• A worldwide IT outage on Friday struck multiple government agencies. The Social Security Administration plans to reopen field offices on Monday after a global IT outage forced SSA to close all local operations Friday. The outage is linked to a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also warned some callers to expect long wait times due to the outage. The White House is convening agencies to better understand the impacts of the incident across government.
  (Crowdstrike outage: SSA shutters offices, other agency impacts - Federal News Network)
• The governmentwide Technology Modernization Fund is awarding more money to agency AI projects. The TMF is giving $10 million to the National Institute of Standards and Technology to support the growth of its recently launched AI Safety Institute. The TMF board also granted nearly $4 million to the Energy Department to modernize its critical nuclear emergency response infrastructure.
  (Technology Modernization Fund announces investments in nuclear safety and AI governance - General Services Administration)
• The Army’s new memo on generative artificial intelligence provides guidance for developers, system owners, users, and commands on how to use GenAI tools. The document instructs system owners and developers to ensure that users can easily determine if their systems rely on GenAI and have the option of accepting or rejecting Gen AI-generated outputs. The guidance encourages the commands to use Gen AI tools and puts the onus on them to identify their GenAI developers, system owners and users to mitigate risk when introducing AI tools into their workflows. The guidance is effective immediately. The Pentagon’s chief information officer office will review this guidance annually.
  (Army’s memo on GenAI setting guardrails around technology - Army Publishing Directorate (APD))

        Join us on Oct. 1 and 2 for Federal News Network's Cyber Leader Exchange where we'll dive into how agencies are strengthening federal cyber capabilities.

• Higher pay rates could be coming soon for some blue-collar federal employees. A proposal to reform the Federal Wage System is entering the early stages of the government’s rulemaking process. The pay system was first created to improve pay rates of nearly 200,000 blue-collar feds. But now decades after its creation, three-quarters of the pay system’s localities have fallen out of step with the private sector. Proposed regulations to fix the issue by re-mapping the Federal Wage System are expected to be published to the Federal Register this October.
  (Blue-collar federal pay reform heading toward rulemaking process - Federal News Network)
• Federal employees can now donate their unused annual leave to feds impacted by Hurricane Beryl. The Office of Personnel Management program lets feds offer any leave hours that they haven’t used, to those who may need additional time off during emergencies. Launching the program for Hurricane Beryl is the most recent instance, but OPM’s use of the emergency leave transfer program has grown in recent years. In 2023, there were seven emergencies that led to OPM initiating a new leave transfer opportunity.
  (Emergency leave transfer for feds affected by Hurricane Beryl - Office of Personnel Management)
• The Defense Innovation Board said the Pentagon continues to overclassify information. The advisory board wants the Pentagon to revisit the issue of classification when working with allies and partners. Board members said the Pentagon defaults to no foreign dissemination protocols. The Defense Department even failed to develop processes for communicating controlled unclassified information in an environment where information sharing is important from the earliest stages of projects.
  (Defense Innovation Board wants DoD to address overclassification - Defense Department)
• A longtime intelligence official is taking the reins at the National Counterterrorism Center. Brett Holmgren has been named acting director of the NCTC. He replaces Christine Abizaid, who had served as NCTC director for the past three years. Holmgren previously served at the State Department as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. He spearheaded a new digital modernization strategy at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Holmgren started out his career as an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
  (DNI Haines thanks NCTC Director Christy Abizaid, welcomes acting Director Brett Holmgren - Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

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