cyber | The Contracting Education Academy

October 22, 2019 By cs

Pentagon standing up a nonprofit to assess vendor cybersecurity

The organization would be responsible for running the department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification.

The Defense Department is looking to stand up a nonprofit organization to measure the strength of its contractors’ cybersecurity practices.

The group would be responsible for running the vendor accreditation process under the Pentagon’s new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or CMMC. The framework, which was released in draft form last month, will serve as a yardstick for determining if contractors are taking sufficient steps to protect the sensitive military data that resides on their networks.

The certification process is intended to push the Pentagon’s extensive network of vendors to strengthen their digital defenses, or at least adopt protections that are appropriate for the sensitivity of their work. The program comes adversaries like China increasingly target defense contractors to steal military secrets.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/10/pentagon-standing-nonprofit-assess-vendor-cybersecurity/160425/

October 1, 2019 By cs

A new contract offers on-demand support for cyber missions

The government has selected Parsons for a $590 million cyber contract called Combatant Commands Cyber Mission Support (CCMS).

The contract, run out of the General Services Administration (GSA), will support cyber capabilities — both hardware and software requirements — across the government to include geographic and functional combatant commands, the interagency and federal/civilian agencies.

“The contract, the way it was structured was to be able to develop and deliver capability — multi-domain capability — across the services, both defensive, non-defensive capabilities, as well as open-source, intelligence analytics through this contracting mechanism,” Paul Decker, executive vice president and head of cyber and intelligence business for Parsons, told Fifth Domain.

“The intent of this is for it to be a multiuse contract to serve both the DoD, as well as interagencies across the department … A key takeaway is as organizational requirements continue to get fed up through the various different tactical organizations, it is all going to be about having technology that is interoperable, integrateable and that can be used at each echelon at an organization.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2019/09/25/a-new-contract-offers-on-demand-support-for-cyber-missions

September 19, 2019 By cs

DoD will require vendor cybersecurity certifications by this time next year

The department released a draft maturity model and timeline for new certification requirements for all of the defense industrial base.

The government has stringent processes for verifying the IT products and services it uses comply with relevant cybersecurity standards, such as authorities to operate for cloud services and supply chain regulations for hardware products. But those standards and processes don’t cover the vendors.

For the Defense Department, this is a critical issue, as doing business with industry requires the department to share sensitive information, even at the earliest steps of the process.

The department has been kicking around the idea of creating a certification standard for defense industrial base companies to ensure vendors’ cybersecurity posture was adequate to handle controlled and classified information. That became an official effort in March, and on Sept. 4th the department released the first draft Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or CMMC, outline for public comment.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/09/dod-will-require-vendor-cybersecurity-certifications-time-next-year/159702/

August 29, 2019 By cs

Agencies faced 31,000 cyber incidents last year, but gave up no major breaches

The total number of incidents the government experienced last year dropped 12% from 2017, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

Federal agencies didn’t experience a single “major” cybersecurity incident in 2018, marking the first time in three years the government avoided such a severe digital incursion, according to a recent White House report.

Not one of the more than 31,000 cybersecurity incidents that agencies faced last year reached the “major incident” threshold, which is defined as an event that affects more than 100,000 individuals or otherwise causes “demonstrable harm” to the U.S, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The government fell victim to five major incidents in 2017 and 16 in 2016.

Overall, the total number of cyber events the government experienced dropped 12% from 2017, OMB officials told Congress in their annual report on the Federal Information Security Management Act.

While OMB called this downward trend “encouraging,” they warned that agencies shouldn’t let down their guard. Phishing and other email-based attacks remain a popular strategy for online bad actors, and the government is still struggling to attribute and label the thousands of attacks every year, officials said.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/08/agencies-faced-31000-cyber-incidents-last-year-gave-no-major-breaches/159290/

August 15, 2019 By AMK

DHS building a contract to manage all its cybersecurity operations centers

The single contract will likely have multiple awardees, each capable of managing the entirety of operations at each of the department’s 17 security centers.

The Homeland Security Department is building a contract vehicle of vendors able to manage its 17 unclassified security operations centers—the cybersecurity hubs for the government’s central cybersecurity agency.

The agency issued a request for information Aug. 7th outlining its tentative acquisition strategy and asking for feedback from industry on capabilities and approach to spinning up additional resources in times of crisis, such as during a large-scale cyberattack.

“The Department of Homeland Security has a complex and demanding mission,” the notice on FedBizOpps reads. “To assist in meeting that mission, DHS needs robust and effective information systems. It also needs to protect those systems from cyber threats posed by nation-states and criminal enterprises.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/08/dhs-building-contract-manage-all-its-cybersecurity-operations-centers/159032/

The organization would be responsible for running the department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification.

The government has selected Parsons for a $590 million cyber contract called Combatant Commands Cyber Mission Support (CCMS).

The department released a draft maturity model and timeline for new certification requirements for all of the defense industrial base.

The total number of incidents the government experienced last year dropped 12% from 2017, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

The single contract will likely have multiple awardees, each capable of managing the entirety of operations at each of the department’s 17 security centers.

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