Startup Talk: Pentagon unveils ‘innovation hub’ to upgrade military’s tech needs

Editor’s note: Each Thursday, Talk Business & Politics provides “Startup Talk,” a round-up of startup, technology and entrepreneurial news.

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PENTAGON UNVEILS NEW EAST COAST INNOVATION HUB TO UPGRADE MILITARY’S TECHNOLOGY NEEDS
Pentagon Chief Ash Carter announced on Wednesday (May 11) the formation of a new technology hub to be built in Boston that is aimed at putting innovative technologies into the hands of warfighters. The Department of Defense’s first Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, was unveiled nearly a year ago on the West Coast as a way to get ideas and products from Silicon Valley into the Defense Department quickly.

The new East Coast DIUx unit will be led by Raj Khan, an Air Force Reserve F-16 pilot and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and seeded with $30 million in funding.

DEVELOPER TAYLOR OTWELL ON THE ART OF PROGRAMMING
Taylor Otwell is an Arkansas programmer who has made a global impact very quickly. The Arkansas Tech University graduate is the developer of the most popular PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) framework in the world. After taking his first job, Otwell plunged into a side project where he developed Laravel, an Open Source PHP Framework. The “side project” took off and became a full-time endeavor.

How does Laravel rank compared to its competitors? And how does Otwell view his high-profile role in the programming world? Read his Q&A with TB&P’s Startup reporter Todd Jones at this link.

IBM WATSON TAKES ON CYBERCRIME
IBM Security on Tuesday announced Watson for Cyber Security, a new cloud-based version of the company’s cognitive technology trained on the language of security as part of a year-long research project.

To further scale the system, IBM will begin working fall with leading universities and their students to further train Watson on the language of cybersecurity, including: California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Pennsylvania State University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; New York University; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC); the University of New Brunswick; the University of Ottawa and the University of Waterloo.

IBM said training Watson for cybercrime is a critical step in the advancement of cognitive security. Watson is learning the nuances of security research findings and discovering patterns and evidence of hidden cyberattacks and threats that could otherwise be missed, officials said.

FTC TO STUDY MOBILE PHONE INDUSTRY’S SECURITY UPDATE PRACTICES
In order to gain a better understanding of security in the mobile ecosystem, the Federal Trade Commission has issued orders to eight mobile device manufacturers requiring them to provide the agency with information about how they issue security updates to address vulnerabilities in smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. The eight companies receiving orders from the FTC include Apple, Blackberry, Google, HTC America, LG Electronics USA, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility and Samsung Electronics America.

Among the information recipients must provide under the orders are the factors that they consider in deciding whether to patch a vulnerability on a particular mobile device; detailed data on the specific mobile devices they have offered for sale to consumers since August 2013; the vulnerabilities that have affected those devices; and whether and when the company patched such vulnerabilities. The orders are part of the FTC’s ongoing efforts to understand the security of consumer’s mobile devices.