The Defense Health Agency has exercised the fourth option of a potential five-year, $61.2M audit readiness support contract with Ernst & Young. The company will continue to support DHA's defense health program financial reporting and compliance division through Aug. 7 next year, the Department of Defense said Friday.

Executives from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Huntington Ingalls Industries have expressed optimism on their financial performance in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, USNI News reported Monday.

Mike Petters, CEO of Huntington Ingalls Industries and former Wash100 Award recipient, has said that the company transitioned over 11K employees to telework settings due to the ongoing pandemic, Inside Defense reported Friday.

Kathy Warden, chairman, president and CEO of Northrop Grumman and a 2020 Wash100 award winner, said she believes future budget pressures as a result of the coronavirus pandemic will not have an impact on the schedule of the U.S. Air Force’s $85B Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile program, the Washington Business Journal reported Wednesday.

Ernst and Young, has partnered with Qualtrics and SAP to help government entities address the COVID-19 outbreak.

Kristi Kennedy, a former vice president at communications firm Subject Matter, has joined Ernst & Young’s Office of Public Policy to serve as director of legislative and strategic engagement.

Veteran-owned small business Viqtory has included SOS International in its list of military friendly employers for 2020.

Maxar Technologies announced on Friday that Carolyn Pittman, a former executive of Northrop Grumman and Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding division, has been appointed senior vice president and chief accounting officer for Maxar. Her appointment is effective Aug. 7.

The Department of Health and Human Services has included global business advisory firm EY in its potential five-year, $49M contract to provide a range of intelligent automation and artificial intelligence services and technologies.

The all-stock merger between L3 Technologies and Harris Corp. has been completed to form L3Harris Technologies (LHX), the new company announced on Monday. L3Harris is officially the sixth largest defense company in the United States worth approximately $17 billion in revenue with over 50,000 employees. The company also announced the details regarding its own leadership, the board of directors and organizational structure. 

Promod Sharma, CEO at Criterion Systems, has received an award recognizing his entrepreneurial efforts in the cybersecurity industry.

Ernst & Young and identity management company SailPoint Technologies have partnered in a move to help joint customers secure digital identities across the organization. EY said Thursday it will integrate cyber managed services with a technology offering SailPoint designed for use on premises or in cloud computing environments to address clients' identity governance requirements.