Boeing has plans to build up an apprenticeship program with a $23.5 million competitive federal grant. The program helps create a recruitment pipeline for cybersecurity and tech jobs, specifically in the St. Louis area facilities. The grant is part of the $500 million Good Jobs Challenge that received funding in last year’s American Rescue Plan Act. It was awarded to the Washington Technology Industry Association Workforce Institute, also known as “Apprenti.” Both Boeing and Amazon Web Services are working with Apprenti to create more cybersecurity talent opportunities. Boeing plans to focus their cybersecurity apprenticeship hiring on Seattle, Huntsville, and St. Louis.
Contract Opportunities to Watch: Torch.AI
The DoD selected Torch.AI’s software for a new cyber and insider threat analysis capability, the System for Insider Threat Hindrance (SITH).
Cyber attacks across all industries are on the rise. Costs related to cybercrime are expected to reach $10.5 trillion per year by 2025, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. Insider threats are one of the primary reasons for data record breaches, which are growing at nearly 200% per year. Employees, former employees, vendors, business partners and business associates are all insiders that could pose a threat to the average business.
With Torch.AI, the new SITH system dramatically increases the quality and availability of information used to detect threats by fusing disparate, complex government and commercial datasets and automating key tasks with advanced machine learning. Torch.AI’s NEXUS™ software platform rapidly connects any source system or database to make data instantly machine readable without human intervention. Additionally, NEXUS™ provides synthesized data objects from a convenient interface. By objectizing the data, SITH avoids typical constraints of system-by-system data integrations, migrations, and duplications, which can impede analysis. Rather, Torch.AI connects to data where it resides with a flexible data mesh, integrating new data quickly, accurately, continuously and in a cost-effective manner without disrupting an agency’s overall mission. This made the Torch.AI software a perfect choice for SITH and the DoD.
Torch.AI developed SITH with the DoD Chief Digital and AI Office’s (CDAO) Directorate for Digital Services (DDS), on behalf of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA). CDAO is responsible for the acceleration of the DoD’s adoption of data, analytics, and AI to generate decision advantage from the boardroom to the battlefield. DCSA is the security agency in the federal government dedicated to protecting America’s trusted workforce and trusted workspaces. DCSA services more than 100 federal entities, oversees 10,000 cleared companies, and conducts approximately two million background investigations each year.
The DoD has made significant strides in unlocking the power of its data, harnessing artificial intelligence (AI), and providing digital solutions for warfighters. In February of 2022, the Office of the Secretary of Defense established the CDAO to strengthen and integrate data, artificial intelligence, and digital solutions in the Department.
“There are few situations where the quality and availability of data is more important than cyber and insider threat. It’s a huge problem. It’s getting worse every day,” said Brian Weaver, Founder and CEO of Torch.AI. “Torch.AI software is mission-ready today. We are proud the DoD has selected our solution for this critical capability and the part we are playing to protect our warfighters and enhance our nation’s security and economic viability.”
Key Employer in the Cleared Industry: TSA
SPONSORED CONTENT: This content is written on or behalf of our Sponsor.
Cleared Opportunities
The Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), a Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration facility near Las Vegas now serves as Anduril’s primary test range.
In this partnership with NNSS, Anduril will use land and airspace within the NNSS for the majority of Anduril R&D and testing.
Operating at NNSS will allow Anduril to test a wider variety of technology capabilities. With a larger and more permissive airspace, Anduril will be able to test capabilities including large unmanned aircraft, explosive and restricted payloads, electronic warfare platforms and classified programs.
Beyond testing operations, Anduril is investing its own resources into NNSS to improve the test site infrastructure and capabilities of the range as well as revitalizing test areas and facilities that were previously unused. Anduril’s partnership with NNSS has also increased manpower support requirements, bringing new high-paid union jobs to the Silver State. These investments will benefit both Anduril’s test capabilities as well as NNSS’s other national security partners from other NNSA laboratories, the Defense Department and other privately-owned entities.
