Technology

Hunting Viruses in Your Water System

Published

1 day ago

August 7, 2026

DEF CON Franklin and National Rural Water Association Launch Water Watch Center to Defend Utilities Against Foreign Hacks

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On the heels of potentially the most widespread cyber attack by a nation state on U.S. water systems in history, DEF CON Franklin and the National Rural Water Association (NRWA) launched the Water Watch Center (WWC) today. The WWC gives small water utilities direct support to mitigate attacks, like the recently alleged Iranian hack. The WWC improves utilities’ cyber defenses, identifies attacks and mitigates breaches to ensure clean water reliably flows from millions of American faucets every day.

Under this new program, an initial set of five managed detection and response providers has joined forces with DEF CON Franklin and NRWA to deliver cyber services directly to small water utilities serving fewer than 10,000 people, which make up 91% of the approximately 50,000 community water systems in the country. These providers, including Defendify, Legato Security, L1 Secure, Rapid7, and Sentinel Technologies, will exchange threat information through a dedicated collaboration mechanism and share that information with NRWA, which serves as the national hub.

“These leading cyber firms and NRWA are architecting a scalable cyber delivery model that has eluded water industry and national security officials to date,” said Jake Braun, co-founder of DEF CON Franklin and former White House acting Principal Deputy National Cyber Director. “Our incredible Franklin volunteers will support the effort to keep costs down for cash-strapped utilities fending off adversaries like the Iranian Red Guard or Chinese Military. To further accelerate the effort, we hand-picked cyber providers who already support water utilities. These folks walk in the door knowing the intricacies of cybersecurity in a water utility environment.”

This new program was announced during the annual DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, following a two-year effort in which DEF CON Franklin recruited a pool of nearly 450 volunteer cyber experts and paired many with water and wastewater utilities in Arizona, Indiana, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming. That work strengthened defenses at individual utilities, however, it also laid bare the intractable problem of scaling security for 150,000 water and wastewater utilities.

Scaling Adoption
The Water Watch Center staff have also begun working with Cyber Maryland to identify and engage rural water utilities across the state of Maryland, to reach systems in states beyond the original seven and, in particular, those civilian utilities supporting military and intelligence assets. “Maryland is home to some of the nation’s most important national security assets, and resilient water infrastructure is fundamental to those missions,” said Roger Austin, Chair of the Cyber Maryland Board. “We’re excited to help connect Maryland’s water utilities with the resources and expertise they need to strengthen their cybersecurity.”

“DEF CON Franklin spent two years with volunteer hackers in the trenches with under resourced water utilities analyzing data and testing hypotheses, many of which didn’t work,” said DEF CON Founder Jeff Moss. “The result is a truly innovative, grassroots public policy program that only the hacker community would have come up with.”

“NRWA is excited to establish the Water Watch Center to provide the tools our sector needs to assess, prepare for, and respond to cyberattacks,” said NRWA Chief Executive Officer Matthew Holmes. “Water systems are facing increasing cybersecurity risks, and with the Water Watch Center, we’re providing rural systems with trusted resources to secure our nation’s water infrastructure.”

Multiple philanthropic and government organizations are supporting the stand-up of the effort. “Rural water systems keep small-town America running, and the folks who operate them shouldn’t have to face foreign hackers alone,” said Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, who provided seed investment for the initiative. “The volunteers and water operators behind the Water Watch Center are doing real cyber civil defense, and I’m glad to support their efforts to help keep our nation’s critical infrastructure safe and secure.”

Former National Cyber Director Chris Inglis applauds the effort: “This initiative lies at the vanguard of the private-public collaboration essential to securing our life line services. Active public-private collaboration is critical to our national security and this is an important step to realizing the vision of forcing adversaries to ‘beat all of us to beat one of us.”

Bleeding Edge Research
The Water Watch Center is working with Vanderbilt University to apply research from the DARPA Cyber Agents for Security Testing and Learning Environment (CASTLE) program. This partnership will aim to create “digital twins” for a select few WWC water and wastewater system environments. Then, researchers will deploy red and blue team agents in these environments, in order to rigorously test and refine automated defensive approaches against cyber attacks – ultimately with the goal of deploying AI defensive solutions to water and wastewater systems nationwide.

Dr. Daniel Balasubramanian, the PI of Vanderbilt’s team on CASTLE, is excited to apply his team’s expertise on building digital twins to the water domain. “By leveraging digital twins, we can safely emulate these complex environments and train AI-driven defensive agents to detect and neutralize attacks. Our ultimate goal is to translate this rigorous testing into robust, real-world protections for water systems across the nation.”

About DEF CON Franklin
Named after Benjamin Franklin — among a litany of better-known accomplishments, also founded America’s first volunteer fire department — for his commitment to science and civics. DEF CON Franklin’s mission is to help put out cyber “fires” for vulnerable critical infrastructure, starting with water systems, wastewater facilities, and schools across the nation. The project also publishes the Hackers’ Almanack, turning insights from DEF CON’s annual conference to better U.S. cybersecurity policy. DEF CON Franklin is a project of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, where Jake Braun serves as the Executive Director.

About the National Rural Water Association
The National Rural Water Association (NRWA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to training, supporting, and promoting the water and wastewater professionals who serve small and rural communities across the country. NRWA provides nationwide training and technical assistance through its affiliated State Rural Water Associations that currently have over 31,000 utility system members across all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Rural Water training and technical assistance covers every aspect of operating, managing, and financing water and wastewater utilities.

For more information or to be connected with a hacker or utility, visit defconfranklin.com.

Twitter/X: @DefConFranklin │ Bluesky: @projectfranklin.bsky.social │ LinkedIn: def-con-franklin

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SOURCE University of Chicago Cyber Policy Initiative

Technology

Retired Marine Corps Major Chris Foster Endorses Michael Carbonara for Congress

Published

3 hours ago

August 8, 2026

– Additional video source from Foster: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1We8XyEE-TO1fBNleOfCqcjVkZJ4JxrRq/view?usp=sharing

– A twenty year Marine and veteran business leader backs Carbonara in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District.

Weston, Fla., Aug. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Carbonara for Congress today announced that Major Chris Foster (Ret.), a retired Marine veteran, has endorsed Michael Carbonara for Congress in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District.

Foster served in the Marine Corps for 20 years on active duty, including overseas deployments, and retired at the rank of Major. Foster currently leads Centroid, a service disabled veteran owned small business supporting the U.S. Intelligence Community. His endorsement deepens Carbonara’s support among the veterans and military families of the district, where he joins combat veteran MAJ Frank Miller Jr. (Ret.), Marine Corps veteran and Fort Lauderdale Commissioner John C. Herbst, Army combat veteran and Coconut Creek Vice Mayor John Brodie, and the national grassroots organization Veterans for America First in backing the campaign.

“In high tempo operations you learn fast who you can count on when everything is on the line, and Michael Carbonara is someone you can count on,” said Foster. “He listens to veterans, he understands where the government has fallen short on our care and our benefits, and he has the backbone to do something about it. Veterans do not need more speeches. We need a fighter who keeps his word, and that is Michael.”

“Major Foster has dedicated most of his life to this country, and men and women like him are the reason we live free,” said Carbonara. “I am honored to have his trust. The veterans of this district have earned more than gratitude. They have earned a government that keeps its promises on health care, on benefits, and on respect, and I will fight for that every single day in Congress.”

Foster joins a growing coalition of support for Carbonara that includes LaBelle City Commissioner Hugo Vargas, HUCKPAC for America, Veterans for America First, the Fort Lauderdale Young Republicans, MAJ. Frank Miller Jr. (Ret), Broward County School Board Member Adam Cervera, Broward Jewish Republican Club President Dan Seidel, Weston City Commissioner Fabio A. Andrade, Weston Mayor Peggy Brown, Fort Lauderdale Commissioner John Herbst, Coconut Creek Vice Mayor John Brodie, Pompano Beach Commissioner Audrey Fesik, Catalina Stubbe of Moms for Liberty, and Collier County businessman Alfie Oakes.

About Michael Carbonara

Michael Carbonara is a South Florida entrepreneur, husband, and father running for Congress in South Florida. After building companies across payments, technology, genetics, and fertility care, he is focused on restoring affordability, defending constitutional freedoms, and making communities safer. A lifelong conservative and groundbreaking entrepreneur, Carbonara has built successful businesses in banking, cryptocurrency, and fertility care. He resides in South Florida with his wife, who escaped communist Cuba for freedom in America, and their children.

MichaelCarbonara.com

Paid for by Carbonara for Congress.

Media Contact: yousef.alami@carbonara.net

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/retired-marine-corps-major-chris-foster-endorses-michael-carbonara-for-congress-302846561.html

SOURCE Carbonara for Congress

Technology

2027 Rates Have Landed: DRGCalculator.com and DRGPricer.com Announce Full Readiness for FY2027 DRG Grouping and Claim Pricing

Published

8 hours ago

August 8, 2026

With the federal fiscal year 2027 inpatient payment update finalized, DRGCalculator.com and DRGPricer.com are live with the new rates today — giving providers, payers, and analysts a two-month head start to model reimbursement impact before the October 1 effective date.

FORT WORTH, Texas, Aug. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — DRGCalculator.com and DRGPricer.com today announced full integration of the finalized CMS Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) payment rates. Both platforms are now live, fully calibrated, and production-ready for FY2027 MS-DRG grouping and inpatient claim pricing—giving healthcare providers, payers, consultants, and financial analysts nearly two months to model reimbursement changes before the October 1, 2026 effective date.

The window between the final rates landing and October 1 is when revenue-cycle teams can actually do something about the change. Our users aren’t reading summaries of the update — they’re pricing their own claims against it, today.

Each October 1, updated MS-DRG relative weights, wage indexes, and payment factors reshape the economics of inpatient reimbursement. Organizations that wait until the new fiscal year begins to evaluate the changes often discover their financial exposure only after claims begin processing. DRGCalculator.com and DRGPricer.com eliminate that uncertainty by allowing users to group and price claims under the finalized FY2027 methodology today, compare results side-by-side with FY2026, and immediately identify where reimbursement will increase or decrease.

“The period between CMS publishing the final rule and October 1 is one of the most valuable planning windows for revenue-cycle teams,” said a Payerparity spokesperson. “Our users aren’t reading summaries of the update—they’re running their own claims through the finalized FY2027 methodology, quantifying reimbursement changes, and making informed operational decisions before the new rates take effect.”

Quantify Your FY2027 Financial Impact

Whether you’re modeling payer contracts, validating reimbursement, supporting Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) initiatives, or processing large claim volumes, the FY2027 transition has measurable financial implications. DRGCalculator.com and DRGPricer.com enable organizations to model reimbursement using their own facility-specific payment factors and contracts—without lengthy implementation projects or onboarding cycles.

FY2027 Platform Capabilities

Live FY2027 DRG Grouping and Pricing — Group inpatient claims and generate detailed pricing worksheets using the finalized FY2027 CMS methodology, with FY2026 available for side-by-side comparison.Facility-Specific Payment Modeling — Calculate reimbursement using your organization’s own wage indexes, payment factors, and reimbursement methodologies rather than relying on national averages.Enterprise Batch Adjudication — Process high claim volumes with enterprise-scale performance and audit-ready transparency.Optional AI-Assisted CDI Review — AI-powered documentation review helps identify potential documentation opportunities while deterministic, rules-based DRG grouping and pricing remain the authoritative reimbursement engine.API and Core-System Integration — Integrate FY2027 DRG grouping and claim pricing directly into payer adjudication platforms, contract modeling systems, revenue-cycle applications, and custom workflows through robust APIs.

Organizations can begin evaluating FY2027 reimbursement immediately by generating pricing worksheets, testing the FY2027 grouper, or integrating the platform into existing workflows at https://drgcalculator.com and https://drgpricer.com.

About DRGCalculator.com and DRGPricer.com

DRGCalculator.com and DRGPricer.com provide enterprise-grade MS-DRG grouping, inpatient reimbursement pricing, and reimbursement-impact modeling for healthcare providers, health plans, consultants, and revenue-cycle professionals. Built for transparency, accuracy, and scale, the platforms deliver worksheet-level pricing from individual claim analysis through enterprise batch adjudication and API integration, helping organizations understand and optimize inpatient reimbursement under current CMS payment methodologies.

Media Contact
Media, Payerparity, 1 (332) 203-6291, info@payerparity.com, https://drgpricer.com/

View original content:https://www.prweb.com/releases/2027-rates-have-landed-drgcalculatorcom-and-drgpricercom-announce-full-readiness-for-fy2027-drg-grouping-and-claim-pricing-302844889.html

SOURCE DRGCalculator.com and DRGPricer.com

Technology

Chandigarh University Researchers Granted Patent for Attendance-Based Health Monitoring System to Monitor Three Vital Health Parameters

Published

8 hours ago

August 8, 2026

Students and Employees to benefit with regular monitoring of mental & physical health

CHANDIGARH, India, Aug. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A team of researchers at Chandigarh University has developed an attendance-based health monitoring system which integrates biometric attendance authentication with real-time physiological health monitoring. The system simultaneously measures multiple vital health parameters including body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure on a single device during biometric attendance.

This innovative health monitoring system, developed by Chandigarh University Researchers, Dr Vikas Wasson, Professor CSE & Director (Engineering Foundations), Dr Sachin Kalsi, Associate Professor (Mechanical Engineering) and Head-Academic Operations (E-Governance) along with three CU students Rishabh Raj, Paras Gupta, Vikas Sharma has been granted a patent by the Indian Patent Office in 2026.

Prof Wasson said the invention addresses a growing societal concern where students and employees often work or study for long hours under intense academic and professional pressure, while neglecting their physical well-being. “In today’s highly competitive world, students and working professionals pursue their academic, career and organisational goals, many times at the cost of their health. But long working hours, stress, irregular routines and inadequate attention to well-being gradually affects an individual’s physical and emotional health. We live in an age surrounded by intelligent technology, yet most attendance systems do not pay attention to the well-being of the person. This invention is an attempt to bridge that gap by integrating health monitoring into an activity that people already perform every day. By monitoring vital health parameters, the system can support the early identification of unusual health trends, thereby contributing to healthier workplaces and educational institutions,” he said.

Prof Kalsi said the invention provides a practical solution for integrating daily attendance management with preventive healthcare monitoring. “Since attendance recording is a mandatory activity in most organizations and educational institutions, the system enables routine health assessment without requiring additional effort from users. It also supports digital health record management by maintaining authenticated historical health data, which can be useful for health trend analysis, occupational safety, and institutional health management,” he said.

“In addition, the system reduces the dependence on wearable monitoring devices by embedding health monitoring directly into the attendance process, making it cost-effective and scalable for large organizations. Overall, the invention contributes to the advancement of smart healthcare infrastructure by combining biometric authentication, real-time physiological monitoring, automated health assessment, and institutional alert mechanisms into a single integrated platform, thereby promoting proactive healthcare, improving safety, and supporting the development of intelligent workplaces and smart educational campuses,” he added.

Prof Wasson said, “Almost every day, millions of us walk up to a biometric machine — in schools, colleges, coaching centres, and offices. Rather than only recording who showed up, the enhanced biometric sensor also reads three vital signs — blood pressure, body temperature, and heart rate. In one effortless gesture that people already perform every single day, the machine begins to understand not just whether a person is present, but how they truly are on the inside,”.

Prof Kalsi said, “A single stressful morning — a frantic rush to reach office on time — can spike anyone’s heart rate and blood pressure. So the system never judges a person on one reading. Instead, it monitors each individual over a seven-day period to learn their personal, normal baseline. Only a genuine, sustained deviation from that baseline is treated as meaningful. Crucially, the readings are never displayed on the screen, because a person confronted with alarming numbers may panic and worsen their own condition. Instead, the weekly data will flow confidentially to the Human Resource team. If someone’s pattern shifts in a concerning way, the HR department can take timely action to provide required medical help,” he added.

Prof Wasson said sensors for blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate all exist today but as separate instruments and have not traditionally been integrated into a single attendance device that millions use at their workplace daily. “The true novelty here is integration: fusing quiet health monitoring into routine biometric attendance, so that emotional and physical distress can be detected early, within the natural rhythm of everyday life, without asking anyone to do a single extra thing. The mission is stated plainly, and it is deeply human: to save lives. By transforming a mundane daily habit into a compassionate early-warning system, this invention aims to build calmer classrooms, healthier workplaces, and — above all — a world where far fewer families are left to grieve the people they love most,” he added.

Congratulating Chandigarh University researchers for getting the patent for attendance based health monitoring system, Deepinder Singh Sandhu, Senior Managing Director, Chandigarh University said, “This achievement reflects the strong research and innovation eco-system at Chandigarh University to support research excellence and intellectual property generation for advancement of technology. Chandigarh University’s students and faculty members have filed more than 6,100 patents out of which 5800 patents have been published and 260 patents have been granted. Chandigarh University is ranked number one as a single institution in India for filing highest number of patents. CU’s 44 faculty members featured in Stanford University–Elsevier list of the world’s top 2% scientists. The range of research activities at Chandigarh University is wide-ranging and profound. University scholars conduct research in practically every domain, and pursue to develop human knowledge through investigation, invention, and understanding. Chandigarh University is recognized as Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (SIRO) by the Union Ministry of Science and Technology’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) for promoting and advancing the research. To amplify research, Chandigarh University has dedicated an annual budget of Rs 15 Crore for research and has also 60 Research Centres and 15 Centres of Excellence. CU’s research initiatives are further strengthened by 67 projects funded by the corporate sector and government bodies with Rs 90 Crore,”.

About Chandigarh University

Chandigarh University is a NAAC A+ Grade University and QS World Ranked University. This autonomous educational institution is approved by UGC and is located near Chandigarh in the state of Punjab. It is the youngest university in India and the only private university in Punjab to be honoured with A+ Grade by NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council). CU offers more than 109 UG and PG programs in the field of engineering, management, pharmacy, law, architecture, journalism, animation, hotel management, commerce, and others. It has been awarded as The University with Best Placements by WCRC.

Website: https://www.cuchd.in/

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