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The DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer FY 18 Strategic Communications Plan is intended to clearly and succinctly set forth the direction, priorities, and capabilities of the OCIO Strategic Communications Division (“Strat Comm”) for fiscal year 2018.

About the Office of the Chief Information Officer

OCIO provides the technological support that enables DHS employees to carry out their work on a daily basis. OCIO is responsible for maintaining a single, DHS-wide IT infrastructure environment that is reliable, scalable, flexible, maintainable, accessible, and secure, ensuring operational excellence – from the workstation to the data center to the mission application.

OCIO Strat Comm Role and Goals

Strat Comm strives to create effective, relevant, engaging, top-quality communications products that reinforce the OCIO and DHS missions, communicate senior leadership priorities and organizational changes, share successes both internally and externally, encourage staff engagement, and support consistent messaging and branding among all OCIO Program Offices.

Audience Feedback

To ensure information is conveyed clearly and effectively, and that Strat Comm adjusts to meet the evolving communications needs of our audience, we conduct an annual OCIO Communications Survey. The survey gives OCIO federal and contractor staff an opportunity to provide anonymous feedback on OCIO communications products and campaigns, and to share ways we can better meet their communications preferences in the future. While the 2017 survey results were extremely positive overall, StratComm has identified several areas of focus for 2018:

• As the OCIO Realignment is finalized, one of our top priorities will be communicating organizational change, and familiarizing staff with new OCIO leadership through leadership profiles and other products.
• We will encourage new leadership to communicate more directly with their program offices, as staff have shown a desire to hear more from their immediate office leadership.
• StratComm will continue to distribute the Weekly Wrap newsletter each Friday, based on employee preferences for a weekly product, but will scale back the OCIO FYI newsletter to a bi-weekly schedule to prevent duplication and over-messaging.
• Based on readers’ interest in OCIO-relevant topics in the news, StratComm will explore options for aggregating pertinent news content and providing to employees on a regular basis.

Classified as a “tabletop particle accelerator,” the device is capable of accelerating half a billion electrons to 2 gigaelectronvolts over a distance of about one inch– energy and speed that could previously be generated only in a handful of massive, multi-million dollar facilities.

Mike Downer, professor of physics at the University of Texas’ College of Natural Sciences, headed the research and is confident it will only lead to further innovation and discovery. His results were published this week in the science journal Nature Communications, and represent a massive advance in the accessibility and potential of molecular research. Downer explains that, “The X-rays we’ll be able to produce are of femtosecond duration, which is the time scale on which molecules vibrate and the fastest chemical reactions take place… They will have the energy and brightness to enable us to see, for example, the atomic structure of single protein molecules in a living sample.”

The method the University of Texas physicists utilized appears primitive to the untrained eye; a strong laser (produced by the Texas Petawatt Laser) is simply directed into a brief puff of gas. The laser-plasma acceleration process is much more complex, however: Downer compared it to what would happen if you threw a motorboat into a lake with its engines running. “The boat (the laser) makes a splash, then creates a wave as it moves through the lake at high speed. During that initial splash, some droplets (charged particles) break off, get caught up in the wave and accelerate by surfing on it. At the other end of the lake they get thrown off into the environment at incredibly high speeds. That’s our 2 GeV electron beam.”

According to Downer, no additional, major advances need to be made for the scientific community to benefit from this latest development: “If we can just keep the funding in place for the next few years, all of this is going to happen. Companies are now selling petawatt lasers commercially, and as we get better at doing this, companies will come into being to make 10 GeV accelerator modules. Then the end users, the chemists and biologists, will come in, and that will lead to more innovations and discoveries.” The outlook is certainly bright for physicists eager to observe the atomic structure of matter in closer detail.

Previous efforts at cloaking, most notably of which took place at Cornell University back in 2011, used “split time lenses” to conceal data transmission by bending light around an object, thus making it “invisible.” More recently, however, Purdue researchers abandoned efforts to bend light and instead utilized a complex “femtosecond laser” to create interference in optical communications. “The temporal cloak idea is built on the same principles [as bending light], but in this case light waves are pulled apart then compressed to generate time pockets that cloak events” (Whitman, extremetech.com). While they succeeded in achieving an official temporal cloak, the Purdue researchers could only create small “pockets” that concealed data for a tiny fraction of the transmission time available. Not to mention, the femtosecond laser isn’t exactly something you’d find lying around the house.

The researchers again modified their approach and used common devices called “phase modulators” to interfere with the pulses of light that represent ones and zeros in fiber-optic communication. Specifically, the signal is manipulated to “have zero intensity when the data are ‘on,’ cloaking the information. Then the cloak converts the pulses back to a flat signal, hiding the fact that any data were transmitted” (Luken, purdue.edu). Essentially, not only is the content of the data transmission hidden, but there is no evidence that it ever took place.

Purdue University graduate student Joseph Lukens pointed out one of the most appealing aspects of the new phase modulator cloaking procedure: “it does use technology that could integrate smoothly into the existing telecommunications infrastructure” (Venere, purdue.edu). It was built with off-the-shelf components commonly found in commercial optical communications, making it “… a feasible security technology in the long run just by refining our current technology (Knapp, forbes.com).

Having seemingly overcome the two primary problems with past temporal cloaking procedures—the need for readily available materials and the ability to conceal data transmissions for significant periods of time—researchers are closer than ever to achieving practicable, large-scale, secure data communications.

Sources:

“Take That, NSA – Scientists Hide Communications Using A Hole In Time”
“Physicists Create a Hole In Time to Hide Events”
Alex Knapp, forbes.com

“’Temporal cloaking’ could bring more secure optical communications”
Emil Venere, purdue.edu

“A temporal cloak at telecommunication data rate”
Joseph M. Lukens, Daniel E. Leaird, and Andrew M. Weiner, nature.com

“Researchers create temporal cloak that can erase digital data from history”
Ryan Whitwam, extremetech.com

The benefit of being late to the tablet game is that Microsoft could identify the deficiencies of other tablets before presenting an alternative. Possibly the first indication of the company’s targeting of the tablet market was the colorful, grid interface of Windows 8, which was clearly designed for use on tablet devices. The Surface comes with a built-in kickstand that is far sturdier than the fold-over Smart Cover of the iPad, and a “Touch Cover,” which is similar to the iPad’s Smart Cover, but has a keyboard printed on it. The Surface is also designed for easy networking; “Where the iPad isolates users from the world of networks, servers and enterprise printers, the Surface works with them seamlessly” (Rash, networkworld.com).

The applications available for Surface, however, are lacking, when compared to Apple’s well-established App Store. The Surface’s screen resolution is also of lower quality than the iPad’s Retina Display. Microsoft may edge ahead, however, thanks to the universal popularity of MS Office. “Microsoft sees this suite of apps as an ace up its sleeve in the war against Apple and Google” (Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet.com).

It is also our hope that, as members of the Department responsible for ensuring the security of our homeland and all the people within it, your commitment and determination are renewed. The work of OCIO impacts every single employee, office, and component, and Americans are safer because of your efforts. May we each continue to do our part to guarantee many happy, safe Thanksgivings to come.

Please keep those affected by the recent attacks in your thoughts and prayers this Thanksgiving. As always, thank you for everything you do to help OCIO carry out our Department’s critical mission.

The holiday season is upon us, and with it come celebrations and gift-giving. An increasing number of consumers are conducting their holiday shopping online. You have probably heard of “Cyber Monday,” a marketing term for the Monday following Thanksgiving, when many online retailers offer discounts and promotions to shoppers.
While online shopping offers increased convenience, it also provides opportunities for scammers to target consumers through fake websites, phony offers, and malicious apps. Ensure you have a safe and secure holiday shopping experience by following the tips below.

Improve your cyber posture and avoid online shopping scams by:

• Remembering to hover over hyperlinks and think before you click. A common phishing tactic during the holidays is a phony email saying an order has shipped, with links like “Click here for expected delivery date” or prompts for your login and password to a particular website.
• Avoiding making purchases over public Wi-Fi. Use your cellular data for financial transactions instead.
• Using your credit card rather than your debit card for online purchases. Credit cards offer more consumer protections if your card is compromised and will not impact your checking account like a debit card. Continue to monitor your credit card and bank statements regularly to detect any fraudulent activity that might go unnoticed.
• Choosing encrypted shopping websites for safer transactions. There are two ways to tell if a site uses encryption: a closed padlock icon in the status bar at the bottom of your browser window or at the top of the browser window, or a website address that begins with “https:” rather than just “http:”.
• Heeding “certificate error” messages. If you receive a notice that says “certificate error,” examine who issued the certificate, ensure the name matches the site you are visiting, and ensure the certificate has not expired.
• Downloading vetted apps. Never install software outside of your phone’s designated app store, and only use trusted vendor apps when shopping from your phone.
• Creating strong passwords. Avoid using the same password for your online accounts; otherwise, one compromised account can translate to multiple compromised accounts.

Up until 1992, U.S. Naval submariners practiced escaping from sinking vessels using the Submarine Escape Training Tank, immersing themselves in a 100-foot tower full of water. While submarine training has evolved to incorporate nuclear technologies and the changing landscape of naval warfare, recent advances in virtual reality (VR) training make former methods look outright primitive in comparison. For instance, defense contractor Booz Allen is working on an immersive training experience called OceanLens, which accurately maps the ocean floor for submarine captains-in-training. Rather than viewing a sample ocean floor generated by a graphic designer, submariners will be able to train in a topographically accurate setting that better prepares them for what they’ll face in actual underwater combat situations.

These virtual reality programs aren’t generating animated, cartoon-like environments; rather, the setting is so realistic that the majority of trainees using a VR flight simulator refused to step out of the “plane,” despite knowing they had stepped into a faux cockpit minutes earlier. And that realism is key in military training that, if conducted incorrectly, could cause significant harm or trauma to soldiers. Current parachute jumper simulations can create a real-time picture of a landing zone, but keep trainees’ feet on the ground until they are comfortable planning missions and taking jumps via virtual reality. In addition to heightened safety, this also translates into a higher pass rate on actual first-time parachute jumps.

New training technologies could also represent significant cost savings for the military. Artificial Intelligence (AI)—software that can learn with use—can adapt over the course of a training program to create new challenges for trainees, rather than requiring an update or replacement. As AI software adjusts to trainees’ skill levels, fighter pilots can learn to face increasingly skilled adversaries, and weapons mechanics can repair more complex malfunctions—all without investing in additional software.

Ultimately, the measure of any training method is its effectiveness. The tech-savvy, millennial-aged recruits entering today’s military are accustomed to virtual experiences and are particularly receptive to AI and VR training. Evidence is on their side: students undergoing virtual training consistently outperform those who are taught in a traditional lecture format. And, for those signing up to make lethal force decisions and risk their lives for their country, training in lifelike scenarios through AI and VR may be their best defense.