The Cybersecurity Sprint: Are we safe yet?

August 7, 2015 / G C Network / Comments Off on The Cybersecurity Sprint: Are we safe yet?

Craigslist.org Founder Hypes Government Transformation

By G C Network | July 29, 2009

Craig Newmark, best known for being the founder of the Craigslist website, is working hard to get the word out on Gov2.0. Last week in FedScoop, he really laid out…

Maria Spinola: An Essential Guide to Cloud Computing

By G C Network | July 27, 2009

Maria Spinola, a Strategic IT Marketing and Innovation Adviser and editor at www.Cloudviews.org, has recently published An “Essential Guide to Possibilities and Risk of Cloud Computing“. Her very pragmatic approach…

US Interior Department IT Infrastructure Vision

By G C Network | July 22, 2009

Tim Quinn, Chief Infrastructure Officer, US Department of Interior, sees IP convergence as a key part of DoI’s future IT infrastructure. During the Federal News Radio Executive Forum, he also…

DHS Acting CIO Margie Graves on Current DHS Challenges

By G C Network | July 20, 2009

During the Federal News Radio Executive Forum, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Acting CIO, Margie Graves provides a unique insight on the department. In her remarks, she described the challenges…

DHS EAGLE & First Source Digital Guide Launched

By G C Network | July 17, 2009

The Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions (EAGLE) is a multiple-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle, specifically designed as the preferred source of information technology (IT) services for…

Looking Forward To GovIT Expo!

By G C Network | July 14, 2009

I am humbled and more than pleased to serve as the Technical Chair of SYS-CON’s 1st Annual Government IT Conference & Expo. To highlight the importance of this conference, I…

Publishing Synergy: Blog, Twitter and Ulitzer

By G C Network | July 13, 2009

Have you ever been given the task of building and executing an aggressive customer outreach program? Well I received my assignment about a year ago and trust me; the budget…

Input: Cloud Computing, Security to Drive US Gov’t IT Spending

By G C Network | July 12, 2009

According to a PC World article, cloud computing and cybersecurity will be the high-growth areas for government IT spending over the next few years. The analysis and consulting firm Input…

GovIT Expo 2009

By G C Network | July 11, 2009

I’m happy to announce my appointment by SYS-CON to be the Technical Chair of the 1st Annual Government IT Conference & Expo. This event is a 1-day deep dive into…

NCOIC To Help FAA on NextGen

By G C Network | July 7, 2009

Today, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC™) announced an agreement to work together to advance the Enterprise Architecture of NextGen, FAA’s national…



UPDATE: NBC News reports U.S. officials have disclosed a hack of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff unclassified email system, which took place on July 25.

Recent unauthorized access to a U.S. government database led to thecompromise of information on at least 21.5 million individuals. This massive background investigation data breach also compromised usernames, passwords, mental health records and financial information. Although a security update applied by the Office of Management and Budget (OPM) and the Homeland Security Department (DHS) in January ended the bulk of the data extraction, the U.S. government-wide remediation efforts were extended by launching a 30-day Cybersecurity Sprint.

This action was done to assess and improve the health of all federal assets and networks. Agencies were instructed to immediately patch critical vulnerabilities, review and tightly limit the number of privileged users with access to authorized systems and dramatically accelerate the use of strong authentication, especially for privileged users.

Last month, federal CIO Tony Scott reported significant progress with the sprint citing significant progress that included:

  • A Federal Civilian agency increase in the use of strong authentication for privileged and unprivileged users from 42 percent to 72 percent
  • An increase in the use of strong authentication for privileged users from 33 percent to nearly 75 percent
  • The implementation of strong authentication across 95 percent of privileged users working in thirteen agencies, or more than half of the largest agencies – including the Departments of Transportation, Veterans Affairs, and the Interior Department



Although I applaud these recent efforts the Federal government has a very long way to go before anything like “Mission Accomplished” can be claimed.

One major and costly challenge will be in the area of software development. A recent analysis, State of Software Security by Veracode, that rated application security by using compliance with Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10 vulnerabilities recommendations as a yardstick found a “low pass rate” in government applications. This dismal finding was theorized as being the result of a:

  • Higher use of scripting languages
  • More prevalent use of older languages which are known to produce more vulnerabilities
  • Low rate of software remediation (e.g. fixing flaws)
The four most important vulnerability categories listed by the study are SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), cryptography issues and command injection. This is due to the pervasiveness and severity of these vulnerabilities, specifically:

  • SQL injection was the application vulnerability most often exploited in web application attacks in a recent 2015 data breach Incident
  • Cross-site scripting is overall far more prevalent than any other category
  • OS command injection played a role in 2014’s Shellshock vulnerability, in which a commonly used open source component was exploited in a way that allowed taking over a server to run arbitrary code
Government developed software has performed poorly by having the highest prevalence of both SQL injection and cross-site scripting when compared to other industry rates.

To improve on the current sad state of government cybersecurity, the Federal Information Security Management Reform Act (FISMA Reform), has been proposed as a new bill. This legislations offers five major initiatives designed to improve the overall security posture of federal networks:

  • Grant DHS authority to operate intrusion detection and prevention software across the .gov domain
  • Authorize DHS to conduct regular risk assessments on federal networks
  • Require DHS to enact defensive countermeasures in the event an intrusion is detected
  • Strengthen and streamline authority Congress gave to DHS last year to issue binding operational directives to federal agencies, especially to respond to substantial cybersecurity threats in emergency situations
  • Mandate annual OMB reports on enforcement of government wide cybersecurity standards
As citizens we all place a significant amount of trust in our government’s ability to defend and protect society and our way of life. In the modern world this trust extends into our cyber life as well. Although individuals still need to take more responsibility for how they manage and protect their own information, our government needs to look at how they are managing our data and protecting information. National security needs to be a priority to all. 
FY 2015 Q2 (4/15) vs. Cybersecurity Sprint Results (7/29)
(https://www.performance.gov/node/3401/view?view=public#progress-update)

( This post was written as part of the Dell Insight Partners program, which provides news and analysis about the evolving world of tech. For more on these topics, visit Dell’s thought leadership site Power More. Dell sponsored this article, but the opinions are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dell’s positions or strategies.)

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