Washington Technology

The Defense Department has essentially ended the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program by suspending its second phase requirements. DOD is keeping in place Phase 1, which requires self-assessments for how companies protect controlled unclassified information in their systems. But DOD said Monday it is suspending Phase 2, which was to begin on Nov. 10 and requires third-party certifications.

A worldwide communications upgrade was postponed during its final stages because of a communications cable. Not the software. Not the installation. Not the people. A communications cable. The cable had been manufactured to an older specification and wasn’t compatible with the upgraded equipment. The dry run did exactly what it was designed to do—it identified a critical issue before implementation. The upgrade was postponed until the problem could be corrected. To most people, it was just a cable.

Leidos notified 305 employees last month that their roles were being eliminated “due to ongoing changes and opportunities in our business environment.” The layoff notices are part of organizational changes the company is making and aim to “help us to operate more efficiently and best position us for the future,” a Leidos spokesman said. All of the 305 affected employees work in “indirect” positions, so they were not directly involved with government agencies or charge their time to customers.

For all the conversations about federal agencies purchasing and adopting more commercial technology, they inevitably turn to how problems that exist in the government ecosystem simply do not exist in commercial markets. But as LMI and Alex Adamczyk see the world, that dynamic does not need to interfere with the use of commercial-like techniques and business models to develop and integrate tech tools for agencies.

The Health and Human Services Department has launched a search for qualified small businesses that could help stand up a office responsible for managing HHS’ relationships with enterprise software vendors. HHS’ future Vendor Management Office would be responsible for overseeing the department’s licensing agreements, many of which fall under blanket purchase agreements and enterprise license agreements.

If 2025 and 2026 have told us anything, it is that the government no longer sees the decades-long status quo of acquisition as acceptable anymore because the world is too different now. Matt Kasberg, chief executive of Company No. 73 on our 2026 Top 100, joins for this episode to explain how Odyssey Systems works with the defense acquisition community and provides an industry point-of-view on all the changes to that function of government.

The Navy plans to launch the next phase of its marketplace for high-capacity, medium-sized drone boats on August 1, according to a contract notice. The medium unmanned surface vessel, or MUSV, program “uses modular design principles to create adaptable and resilient solutions that can effectively counter evolving threats,” the July 7 notice states.

The Census Bureau is planning an industry for letter this month to explain more of its strategy for the 2030 population tally. The agency released draft solicitation documents in April and received a large amount of questions. Because of that, the bureau is hosting an industry day for what could be a $1 billion small business vehicle for up to 10 years. The agency is pushing to release a solicitation in August. The contract will be a series of multiple-award blanket purchase agreements.

Bluestone Investment Partners has hired Dr. Jay Moorman, a two-decade veteran of the market and former Parsons Corp. executive, as CEO of a portfolio company focused on space and missile defense programs. Qualis, InTrack Radar Technologies and Tektonux joined forces earlier this year to create a 400-employee contractor that specializes in modeling and simulation, radar and electro-optical products, and artificial intelligence.

Booz Allen Hamilton Christopher Porter has joined the company as global chief information security officer after 10 years at Fannie Mae as its CISO. He first joined Fannie Mae in 2015 as deputy CISO and was promoted a year later. Prior to Fannie Mae, he spent 10 years at Verizon. Porter announced his new Booz Allen role in a LinkedIn post.