By Anthony Robbins
Feb 17, 2021
The United States leads the world in military assets with 40,000 armored vehicles, 13,000 aircraft and nearly 500 ships. Maintaining all these assets to ensure they’re combat-ready costs the Defense Department an estimated $71 billion annually. The sustainment for just one program the F-35 Lightning II fighter is projected to cost a whopping $1 trillion over the next 60 years.
Sustainment is not only expensive, it’s essential for safety. We’ve lost 224 brave pilots and air crew members as a result of thousands of military aviation accidents since 2013, according to a congressional report released in December 2020.
The National Commission on Military Aviation Safety spent five years examining these accidents to develop a set of key recommendations. While the report cites several contributing factors, including funding issues and airman fatigue, it specifically highlights artificial intelligence as a means of improving aviation safety.
By Jan Lemnitzer
Feb 18, 2021
In the past five years, ransomware attacks have evolved from rare misfortunes into common and disruptive threats. Hijacking the IT systems of organizations and forcing them to pay a ransom in order to reclaim them, cybercriminals are freely extorting millions of pounds from companies – and they’re enjoying a remarkably low risk of arrest as they do it.
At the moment, there is no coordinated response to ransomware attacks, despite their ever-increasing prevalence and severity. Instead, states’ intelligence services respond to cybercriminals on an ad-hoc basis, while cyber-insurance firms recommend their clients simply pay off the criminal gangs that extort them.
Feb 17, 2021
When the Census Bureau announced that the data states use for redistricting would be delayed, many states plans were thrown for a loop.
Between complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, new technology to protect privacy and security and the Trump administration’s shifting deadlines, the release of the redistricting data will delayed until Sept. 30. That data includes the details on race, ethnicity, voting age, housing occupancy status at the census block level – all of which plays into the redistricting decisions that will most immediately impact the 2022 primary elections.
Census now plans to release all states’ data at once, rather than via a staggered delivery, which officials said would ensure delivery of “the high-quality fit-for-use data products the states need for redistricting.”
Security experts understand the desire of entrepreneurs and election officials to use new voting methods to reach voters who may be disenfranchised by in-person or mail-in voting, but the security risk might be too great, they say.
By Stephanie Kanowitz
Feb 11, 2021
A public/private partnership in Tucson, Ariz., is closing the digital divide by not only connecting more than 32,000 of the city’s 212,000 households without reliable internet access, but also powering up Tucson’s smart city strategy.
The city and Insight Enterprises are within weeks of completing Phase I of a municipal wireless broadband solution using the Citizen Broadband Radio Service network, a band of radio-frequency spectrum from 3.5 GHz to 3.7 GHz that the Federal Communications Commission has designated for incumbent, priority and general authorized access. Insight’s Cloud + Data Center Transformation team provides project management and long-term managed services over the single solution that combines technologies from multiple providers.