Contractors that conduct background investigations for the federal government will have to report information security incidents to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) within half an hour, are required to use smartcards as a second layer of security when logging on to agency networks, and must agree to let OPM inspect their systems at any time.
Those are new requirements OPM has written into draft contracting documents released last month that govern how the personal, often sensitive, information gleaned during background investigations should be stored on contractors’ computer systems.
The draft request for proposals is “intended to provide industry advanced notice of the pending solicitation as well as an opportunity to provide comments, feedback and recommendations that the government can consider prior to finalizing the solicitation,” OPM spokesman Sam Schumach told Nextgov in an email.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2016/02/contracting-docs-opm-tighten-it-security-background-investigation-companies/125741
