The White House looks to the private sector in a new offensive hacking operations memo

President Donald Trump signed a national security memorandum Wednesday that lays the groundwork for private sector companies to take a larger role in helping law enforcement carry out offensive hacking operations against transnational criminal organizations. The White House said sustained fraud and other cyber-enabled campaigns from transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) warranted the memo, and cited a fraud-focused executive order from March as only the first step. ”This memorandum expands the fight against TCO-perpetrated cybercrime by incorporating the ingenuity of the private sector,” it reads. Under the memorandum, a federal coordination center “shall create, manage, and maintain a Program to authorize Participating Companies … to conduct Cyber Surveillance Operations and Cyber Effects Operations against foreign Cyber-Enabled Transnational Criminal Organizations (CE-TCOs), under the control and oversight of the Federal Government“ that would be “part of lawful investigatory, protective, or intelligence operations carried out by Federal law enforcement.” Participating companies would have to sign contracts with the Justice Department or Department of Homeland Security to “undergo rigorous vetting.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs has proposed expanding its contract with Oracle Center for electronic health modernization because it will soon run out of money, a contract update posted Tuesday shows. VA would be increasing the overall contract ceiling, already at a staggering near $10 billion, and extending the potential period of performance by three years due to the “unanticipated complexity of the effort,” contracting documents said. “Due to unanticipated complexities in deploying this system, extensive site-specific customizations, as well as the other factors … VA has reached the current contract ceiling sooner than originally planned,” the documents said. “VA anticipates using the remaining ceiling by the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 and thus requires an increase.” While the new ceiling value is redacted in the documents, they did say the estimated value is “based on historical work executed to date, the standard deployment model, and all other requirements necessary to deploy and sustain the EHR under the approved accelerated deployment schedule, which is required to meet VA requirements and Veteran’s needs.” The VA said “technical glitches impacting use of the system,” training issues, clinical gaps or functionality errors “with potential impact on patient safety,” and COVID-19 restrictions on on-site deployment delayed the modernization, and it cannot be fully accomplished in the remaining time.

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