The U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) operates in a dynamic threat environment characterized by global terrorism, transnational crime, and changing political and economic conditions, all of which drive increasing volumes and complexity of cross-border activity. To meet these challenges, USBP prioritizes enhanced intelligence and data-driven capabilities to generate timely, accurate, and actionable information that enables the identification, disruption, and dismantlement of threat networks. These capabilities include tools, data services, and related technologies that support the collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination of information derived from a broad range of sources, including publicly available information.

Within this environment, Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) capabilities play a critical role in leveraging publicly available information to support intelligence production, targeting, and vetting. USBP must be able to collect, triage, process, and analyze large volumes of publicly available information and integrate OSINT-derived insights with other intelligence and law enforcement information, while ensuring that the use of OSINT remains consistent with applicable laws, policies, and oversight requirements.

Separately, the USBP Strategic Collaboration Group (SCG) leads the identification, piloting, and evaluation of advanced technology solutions, such as those supporting vehicle identification and tracking, digital media exploitation, radio frequency signal detection and geolocation, maritime domain awareness, vehicle counter-surveillance, and AI-enabled analytic workflows to enhance situational awareness and agent safety. As the volume, variety, and velocity of available data continue to grow, SCG must ensure that these technology pilots and related capabilities can effectively exploit emerging data sources and technologies in support of USBP’s mission.

To maximize the effectiveness of its intelligence and technology capabilities, the USBP requires a deliberate and coordinated approach to the planning, governance, and integration of these capabilities, ensuring they are fully aligned with broader intelligence and operational priorities. The USBP Headquarters Intelligence Division (INTEL) requires program management support to strengthen its ability to efficiently acquire, implement, and sustain platforms and tools that enhance analytic tradecraft, improve targeting and vetting workflows, and increase the speed and quality of intelligence support to operations that protect the homeland.

Review the USBP intelligence RFI.

Source: SAM

The right opportunity can be worth millions. Don’t miss out on the latest IC-focused RFI, BAA, industry day, and RFP information – subscribe to IC News today.

The post USBP seeks intelligence program management support appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

DHS S&T requires professional scientific, technical and programmatic assistance services to support efforts in research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) to S&T. S&T’s programmatic portfolio requires scientific and technical (ST) support that can identify, apply and explore techniques across a full spectrum of scientific and technical disciplines. Such disciplines may include behavioral economics and social science; communications and network systems; cybersecurity; software development and quality assurance; data science and analytics; biometrics; identity access and management; modeling and simulation; artificial intelligence; machine learning; autonomous systems; explosives; engineering; physics; biology; virology; and chemistry.

Review the DHS S&T RFI.

Source: SAM

Don’t miss out — become a paid subscriber to IC News, and lock in subscription rates at 2025 prices. You’ll get full access to breaking news from across the IC contracting space, with new articles each weekday.

The post DHS posts RFI for scientific, technical support services appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

This RFI/Sources Sought is seeking information to aid in refining the acquisition strategy, determining if a set aside will be used, contract vehicle selection, and seeking comments and information on the High-Level Requirements documents.

Please see the Statement of Work (SOW) Comment Matrix along with the draft SOW. The draft SOW is a working document and subject to change prior to solicitation. The SOW Comment Matrix is provided to identify issues or ask questions about the draft SOW only.

Review the DHS CDISS RFI.

Source: SAM

Time is running out — become a paid subscriber to IC News today, and lock in subscription rates at 2025 prices. You’ll get full access to breaking news from across the IC contracting space, with new articles each weekday.

The post DHS issues CDISS RFI appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

This third phase challenges the private sector to deliver secure, accurate, and user-friendly technologies that can combat identity fraud when users apply for government services, open bank accounts, or verify social media accounts.

By challenging industry to improve these technologies, DHS will be better able to crack down on a whole host of crimes that rely on identity fraud: human trafficking, financial fraud, identity theft, evading law enforcement, and others.

DHS S&T completed the Remote Identity Validation Technology Demonstration (RIVTD) in 2024, which helped establish new benchmarks for remote identity verification technology and gave companies clear targets for improvement.

The goal of each RIVR phase is to enable industry to develop more secure, accurate, and easy-to-use technologies; objectively measure performance against realistic and sophisticated attacks; answer questions about the overall performance, risks, and fairness of these technologies for use in commercial or government applications; and inform efforts to standardize and certify technologies that are effective against sophisticated and rapidly evolving attacks.

“The Remote Identity Validation Rally is demonstrating the power of public-private collaboration.  DHS S&T and its interagency partners are providing its expertise in developing challenging evaluations and industry is demonstrating its ingenuity to develop technologies that strengthen the security and efficiency of online digital transactions for both government and commercial use cases,” said Arun Vemury, S&T Senior Engineering Advisor for Identity Technologies. “We’re all working towards building a more secure and trusted future for the American people.”

“As we launch this next effort, we invite developers to showcase the capabilities and performance of their technologies to differentiate between legitimate users and sophisticated impersonation attempts.”

The first phase of the RIVR focused on fraud detection, evaluating the ability of software to compare face images on ID documents to selfie photos, while the second phase focused on authenticating identity documents. For this phase, remote identity validation systems will demonstrate their ability to differentiate between legitimate users and attackers attempting to impersonate other users. Both Phases 1 and 2 have closed for applications.

“While digital IDs represent improvements in identity security and user experience, they also present different threat vectors for bad actors,” said Jason Lim, Tech Counselor for TSA Administrator. “As a stakeholder in the emerging digital ID space, TSA believes that our ongoing partnership with DHS S&T is critical to understanding and mitigating evolving risks associated with presentation attacks for both enrollment and verification.”

The results of these tests will inform new standards, test protocols and requirements for U.S. agencies, international partners and other stakeholders. This program was developed in partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Homeland Security Investigations Forensic Laboratory, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Review additional information about DHS RIVR phase 3.

Source: DHS

IC News brings you business opportunities like this one each week. If you find value in our work, please consider supporting IC News with a subscription.

The post DHS announces phase 3 of RIVR appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

The Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board, a public-private advisory committee established by DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, identified the need for clear guidance on how each layer of the AI supply chain can do their part to ensure that AI is deployed safely and securely in U.S. critical infrastructure. This product is the culmination of considerable dialogue and debate among the Board, composed of AI leaders representing industry, academia, civil society, and the public sector. The report complements other work carried out by the Administration on AI safety, such as the guidance from the AI Safety Institute, on managing a wide range of misuse and accident risks.

America’s critical infrastructure – the systems that power our homes and businesses, deliver clean water, allow us to travel safely, facilitate the digital networks that connect us, and much more – is vital to domestic and global safety and stability. These sectors are increasingly deploying AI to improve the services they provide, build resilience, and counter threats. AI is, for example, helping to quickly detect earthquakes and predict aftershocks, prevent blackouts and other electric-service interruptions, and sort and distribute mail to American households. These uses do not come without risk, and vulnerabilities introduced by the implementation of this technology may expose critical systems to failures or manipulation by nefarious actors. Given the increasingly interconnected nature of these systems, their disruption can have devastating consequences for homeland security.

“AI offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the strength and resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure, and we must seize it while minimizing its potential harms. The Framework, if widely adopted, will go a long way to better ensure the safety and security of critical services that deliver clean water, consistent power, internet access, and more,” said Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “The choices organizations and individuals involved in creating AI make today will determine the impact this technology will have in our critical infrastructure tomorrow. I am grateful for the diverse expertise of the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board and its members, each of whom informed these guidelines with their own real-world experiences developing, deploying, and promoting the responsible use of this extraordinary technology. I urge every executive, developer, and elected official to adopt and use this Framework to help build a safer future for all.”

If adopted and implemented by the stakeholders involved in the development, use, and deployment of AI in U.S. critical infrastructure, this voluntary Framework will enhance the harmonization of and help operationalize safety and security practices, improve the delivery of critical services, enhance trust and transparency among entities, protect civil rights and civil liberties, and advance AI safety and security research that will further enable critical infrastructure to deploy emerging technology responsibly. Despite the growing importance of this technology to critical infrastructure, no comprehensive regulation currently exists.

DHS identified three primary categories of AI safety and security vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure: attacks using AI, attacks targeting AI systems, and design and implementation failures. To address these vulnerabilities, the Framework recommends actions directed to each of the key stakeholders supporting the development and deployment of AI in U.S. critical infrastructure as follows:

• Cloud and compute infrastructure providers play an important role in securing the environments used to develop and deploy AI in critical infrastructure, from vetting hardware and software suppliers to instituting strong access management and protecting the physical security of data centers powering AI systems. The Framework encourages them to support customers and processes further downstream of AI development by monitoring for anomalous activity and establishing clear pathways to report suspicious and harmful activities.
• AI developers develop, train, and/or enable critical infrastructure to access AI models, often through software tools or specific applications. The Framework recommends that AI developers adopt a Secure by Design approach, evaluate dangerous capabilities of AI models, and ensure model alignment with human-centric values. The Framework further encourages AI developers to implement strong privacy practices; conduct evaluations that test for possible biases, failure modes, and vulnerabilities; and support independent assessments for models that present heightened risks to critical infrastructure systems and their consumers.
• Critical infrastructure owners and operators manage the secure operations and maintenance of key systems, which increasingly rely on AI to reduce costs, improve reliability and boost efficiency. They are looking to procure, configure, and deploy AI in a manner that protects the safety and security of their systems. The Framework recommends a number of practices focused on the deployment-level of AI systems, to include maintaining strong cybersecurity practices that account for AI-related risks, protecting customer data when fine-tuning AI products, and providing meaningful transparency regarding their use of AI to provide goods, services, or benefits to the public. The Framework encourages critical infrastructure entities to play an active role in monitoring the performance of these AI systems and share results with AI developers and researchers to help them better understand the relationship between model behavior and real-world outcomes.
• Civil society, including universities, research institutions, and consumer advocates engaged on issues of AI safety and security, are critical to measuring and improving the impact of AI on individuals and communities. The Framework encourages civil society’s continued engagement on standards development alongside government and industry, as well as research on AI evaluations that considers critical infrastructure use cases. The Framework envisions an active role for civil society in informing the values and safeguards that will shape AI system development and deployment in essential services.
• Public sector entities, including federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, are essential to the responsible adoption of AI in critical infrastructure, from supporting the use of this technology to improve public services to advancing standards of practice for AI safety and security through statutory and regulatory action. The United States is a world leader in AI; accordingly, the Framework encourages continued cooperation between the federal government and international partners to protect all global citizens, as well as collaboration across all levels of government to fund and support efforts to advance foundational research on AI safety and security.

Source: DHS

Your competitors read IC News each day. Shouldn’t you? Learn more about our subscription options, and keep up with every move in the IC contracting space.

The post DHS releases secure AI for critical infrastructure framework appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

As part of this engagement, Obsidian will deliver specialized services to strengthen DHS I&A’s ability to coordinate with federal, state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT), private sector, and international partners. These services are pivotal in addressing the evolving threat landscape, which includes terrorism, transnational crime, cyber warfare, and other asymmetric threats to U.S. security. Obsidian will deploy a team of experienced professionals, skilled in intelligence operations, program management, event coordination, and technical support. Their expertise will ensure that DHS I&A maintains a robust, resilient information-sharing infrastructure, essential to identifying and mitigating emerging risks.

“We are privileged to continue our partnership with DHS I&A,” said Tyrone Logan, CEO of Obsidian Solutions Group. “This contract highlights our unwavering commitment to supporting the agency’s mission to safeguard the nation through enhanced intelligence capabilities.”

The contract includes a nine-month base performance period, with two additional 12-month option periods, ensuring sustained support for DHS’s intelligence and outreach initiatives.

Source: Obsidian

Stay in the know with breaking news from across the IC and IC contracting landscape by becoming a paid subscriber to IC News. Your support makes our work possible.

The post Obsidian secures DHS Intelligence and Analysis contract appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

Smith’s has extensive experience as an acquisition professional with the Department of Defense and DHS. Before retiring from federal service, he held a Senior Executive Service position as a component acquisition executive at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

As the DHS business development and strategy lead, Smith will be instrumental in expanding Rite-Solutions’ operational divisions in the DHS market, including enterprise solutions, business systems, and IT services, according to the company.

“We are excited to have Tim on the business development team to lead our new DHS agency thrust area,” said Laurie Carter, executive vice president of business development at Rite-Solutions. “Tim’s experience as a DHS executive will enable Rite-Solutions to serve other federal agencies, beyond the DoD.”

Working as a senior project manager in the Office of the Under Secretary for Management, he was responsible for conducting investment analyses of U.S. Coast Guard large cutter programs, cybersecurity programs, and command and control systems.

Smith also spent 17 years in the Navy, holding positions in Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Sea Logistics Center, Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, and Naval Air Systems Command. He started his career as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps, leading Marines in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Source: Rite-Solutions

Keep up with your competitors by following notable executive moves across the IC contracting space — become a paid subscriber to IC News.

The post Rite-Solutions adds Tim Smith as DHS BD lead appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

“This visionary roadmap, informed by scientific efforts, will empower DHS and its components to reduce risks to the homeland through optimized innovation, research and development investments,” said Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov, DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology. “The technologies resulting from our IRD investments play a critical role in equipping the Department’s front-line operators with necessary tools to outpace our adversaries and enhance our preparedness and response capabilities.”

In 2022, Secretary Mayorkas tasked the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) with examining DHS’s execution of research and development (R&D), including through developing a coordinated strategy focused on areas for long-term Departmental research. The resulting IRD Strategic Plan will help the Department and its partners make coordinated, integrated investments. In addition to capturing current IRD efforts already underway – compiling data from every DHS component and office – it provides an overview of complementary efforts led by federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, nongovernmental and private sector entities.

From this analysis of common research fields, the plan highlights eight Strategic Priority Research Areas (SPRAs) and future capabilities that DHS needs across its missions. The SPRAs will enhance the coordination of R&D across DHS while giving a demand signal for industry, interagency, academic, and international communities about future partnership opportunities. The Strategic Priority Research Areas for Fiscal Years 2024-2030 are:

• Advanced Sensing – next-generation sensor capabilities to provide enhanced detection performance against a broad spectrum of threats.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Autonomous Systems – automated technologies to provide predictions, recommendations, or decisions across a wide variety of operating environments, including means to deal with adversarial AI.
• Biotechnology – augmented capabilities to predict, detect, and defend against current and emerging bioagents and biotechnologies of concern.
• Climate Change – technologies to strengthen climate adaptation/resilience, improve equity, protect critical infrastructure, and reduce carbon emissions.
• Communications and Networking – enhanced communications and networking capabilities, while maintaining security and resiliency.
• Cybersecurity – enhanced resiliency, protection, and operational assurance across data, software, hardware, and communications networks.
• Data Integration, Analytics, Modeling and Simulation – enhanced, integrated data ecosystems, analytics, and modeling to enable better and more accurate data-driven insights, predictions, and decisions.
• Digital Identity and Trust – enhanced capabilities to establish and verify both individuals’ identities and the validity, integrity, and privacy of associated data.

In collaboration with stakeholders from across DHS, S&T is advancing implementation of the Strategic Plan by developing IRD investment roadmaps for each SPRA. These roadmaps will inform the Department’s budget process for FY 2027 and beyond.

More information about the IRD Strategic Plan and its priorities can be found at DHS IRD Strategic Plan FY24-30 | Homeland Security.

Source: DHS

If you enjoyed this article, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep our site ad-free.

The post DHS releases innovation, research, and development strategic plan appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

President Biden directed Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to establish the board, which includes 22 representatives from a range of sectors, including software and hardware companies, critical infrastructure operators, public officials, the civil rights community, and academia.  The inaugural members of the board are:

• Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI
• Dario Amodei, CEO and Co-Founder, Anthropic
• Ed Bastian, CEO, Delta Air Lines
• Rumman Chowdhury, Ph.D., CEO, Humane Intelligence
• Alexandra Reeve Givens, President and CEO, Center for Democracy and Technology
• Bruce Harrell, Mayor of Seattle, Washington; Chair, Technology and Innovation Committee, United States Conference of Mayors
• Damon Hewitt, President and Executive Director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
• Vicki Hollub, President and CEO, Occidental Petroleum
• Jensen Huang, President and CEO, NVIDIA
• Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO, IBM
• Fei-Fei Li, Ph.D., Co-Director, Stanford Human-centered Artificial Intelligence Institute
• Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland
• Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft
• Shantanu Narayen, Chair and CEO, Adobe
• Sundar Pichai, CEO, Alphabet
• Arati Prabhakar, Ph.D., Assistant to the President for Science and Technology; Director, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
• Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO, Cisco; Chair, Business Roundtable
• Adam Selipsky, CEO, Amazon Web Services
• Dr. Lisa Su, Chair and CEO, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
• Nicol Turner Lee, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Technology Innovation, Brookings Institution
• Kathy Warden, Chair, CEO and President, Northrop Grumman
• Maya Wiley, President and CEO, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

DHS is responsible for the overall security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure, which hundreds of millions of Americans rely on every day to light their homes, conduct business, exchange information, and put food on the table. Critical infrastructure encompasses sixteen sectors of American industry, including our defense, energy, agriculture, transportation, and internet technology sectors. The board will advise DHS on ensuring the safe and responsible deployment of AI technology in these sectors in the years to come, and it will look to address threats posed by this technology to these vital services.

“Artificial Intelligence is a transformative technology that can advance our national interests in unprecedented ways. At the same time, it presents real risks— risks that we can mitigate by adopting best practices and taking other studied, concrete actions,” said Secretary Mayorkas.  “I am grateful that such accomplished leaders are dedicating their time and expertise to the board to help ensure our nation’s critical infrastructure—the vital services upon which Americans rely every day—effectively guards against the risks and realizes the enormous potential of this transformative technology.”

Secretary Mayorkas selected these experts to develop multifaceted, cross-sector approaches to pressing issues surrounding the benefits and risks of this emerging technology. It will convene for the first time in Early May with subsequent meetings planned quarterly. At the outset, the board will: 1) provide the Secretary and the critical infrastructure community with actionable recommendations to ensure the safe adoption of AI technology in the essential services Americans depend upon every day, and 2) create a forum for DHS, the critical infrastructure community, and AI leaders to share information on the security risks presented by AI.

Source: DHS

Stay in the know with breaking news from across the IC and IC contracting landscape by becoming a paid subscriber to IC News. Your support makes our work possible.

The post DHS stands up AI safety and security board appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

Protobom enables all organizations, including system administrators and software development communities, to read and generate Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) and file data, as well as translate this data across standard industry SBOM formats. The OpenSSF has further committed to facilitating the open source and collaborative development of Protobom while encouraging the growth of an open source contributor community.

Key to strengthening software security and software supply chain risk management, an SBOM is a nested, formatted inventory that lists the components making up software to include the supply chain relationships of various open source and commercial components used in building software. Understanding the supply chain of software, obtaining an SBOM and using it to analyze known vulnerabilities are crucial for managing cybersecurity risk. Currently, multiple SBOM data formats and identification schemes exist, which makes it challenging for organizations wanting to adopt SBOM usage. Protobom aims to mitigate this issue by offering a format-neutral data layer on top of the standards that lets applications work seamlessly with any kind of SBOM.

Protobom can be integrated into both commercial and open source applications, which will promote SBOM adoption, and make SBOM creation and consumption easier and cheaper. Protobom tooling can access, read and translate SBOMs in various data formats thus providing seamless interoperability. By integrating Protobom into applications that link SBOM information with external records of vulnerabilities and severity information from trusted sources, the applications can provide information on available patches and mitigations.

“To defend against the increasing number of software attacks, it’s critical to utilize innovative tools that create a more transparent software supply chain,” said Melissa Oh, Silicon Valley Innovation program managing director. “DHS is tapping into the startup community to develop technology that will shine a light on risks within supply chains and bolster the overall cybersecurity of organizations.”

“Vulnerabilities in software are a key risk in cybersecurity, with known exploits being a primary path for bad actors to inflict a range of harms. By leveraging SBOMs as key elements of software security, we can mitigate the risk to the software supply chain and respond to new risks faster, and more efficiently,” said Allan Friedman, CISA senior advisor and strategist. “Protobom is a step towards greater efficiency and interoperability by translating across the widely used formats so that tools and organizations can focus on what’s important. It is a positive solution that helps shape a more transparent software-driven world.”

“Hosting Protobom marks a pivotal moment for OpenSSF and our work to secure open source software,” said Omkhar Arasaratnam, general manager of OpenSSF. “Protobom not only simplifies SBOM creation, but also empowers organizations to proactively manage the risk of their open source dependencies. The security of open source software requires partnership between the public sector, private sector and the community. The OpenSSF is proud to be a part of this mission.”

Source: OpenSSF

Your competitors read IC News each day. Shouldn’t you? Learn more about our subscription options, and keep up with every move in the IC contracting space.

The post CISA, DHS S&T, and OpenSSF launch Protobom project appeared first on Intelligence Community News.