The Fed Mission Success Round Up: Cybersecurity, Modernization, and More in Federal Agencies

Weekly News Round Up
Written By Fareeha Khan

Welcome to the Fed Mission Success News Round Up brought to you by Makpar. Each week, we will provide a summary of actionable news and insights to help aid in overall mission success for Federal agency IT decision-makers and influencers.

Fact Sheet: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Expands Public-Private Cybersecurity Partnership to Water Sector

The Biden-Harris Administration announced it will extend the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Cybersecurity Initiative to the water sector. The Water Sector Action plan outlines surge actions that will take place over the next 100 days to improve the cybersecurity of the sector. The action plan was developed in close partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Water Sector Coordinating Council (WSCC).

White House Starts the Clock on Zero Trust Adoption

Agencies will have to meet specific zero trust security requirements by the end of fiscal year 2024 under a new policy memo, including updates to identity policies that will affect how Federal employees access systems and applications.

NIST Releases Final Cybersecurity Assessment Guidance

The National Institute of Standards and Technology issued its newest and final copy of guidance for organizations to assess their internal security IT systems, following a draft copy and comment period. The document, titled “Assessing Security and Privacy Controls in Information Systems and Organizations,” focuses on helping entities manage cybersecurity risks across their individual networks.

GSA to Replace Federal IT Dashboard at Next White House Budget Proposal

The General Services Administration will replace the Federal IT Dashboard when the White House submits its proposed fiscal 2023 budget to Congress in about a month, according to IT Data Transparency Director Dan York. Two applications — the IT Collect Application Programming Interface (API) and the Office of Government-wide Policy (OGP) Visualization Platform — will supplant the legacy dashboard, following a year-long modernization effort.

USCIS Chief Data Officer Prioritizing Data Quality in Fiscal 2022

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ top priority is reducing the time it takes to obtain green cards, visas and employment authorizations in fiscal 2022, and for its Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO) that means first improving data quality. OCDO’s Data Quality Branch already created a process allowing USCIS’s more than 1,000 data analysts to report data issues, and next the office wants to streamline processing of employment authorization documents (EADs).

IRS Selfie Technology Asks if You’re Ready for Your Close-Up

The IRS has taken several steps to combat ID theft, including issuing Identity Protection PINs, limiting the number of tax refunds going to financial accounts or addresses, and masking personal information from tax transcripts. But the IRS’s latest effort to combat ID theft is causing controversy: Selfies.

New Threat Metrics Can Help Improve Federal Cybersecurity

Cyber risk management is more than just sharing information; it includes analyzing existing and potential risk. It means using existing efforts around vulnerability management, threat detection and network defense as a springboard for connecting the relationship between threat, vulnerability and consequence with actionable metrics that drive decision-making.

From the Makpar Blog …

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Fareeha Khan
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