Jeff Wagner, information security director at the Office of Personnel Management, has authored a white paper that proposes a “security through visibility” method to safeguard federal cyber networks, Fedscoop reported Thursday.Dan Verton writes Wagner also called on federal cyber professionals to follow a security and risk management framework from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
“Security isn’t just about controls or defense or protections,” Wagner wrote in the white paper released Wednesday by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s Bethesda chapter.
“It is about all that, combined with the knowledge of how they work together and what can be seen, identified, tracked and contained,” he added, according to Fedscoop.
Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller reported Thursday that OPM is working to implement an IT orchestration system that Wagner believes can help the agency gain real-time network visibility and manage security controls.
OPM partnered with security firm CSG Invotas to adopt an automated platform designed to orchestrate cyber defenses, according to the station.
“We try to simplify our processes as much as possible and then you can look through your flow chart and see where you can leverage orchestration and where can I stop having humans do simple things?” Wagner told Federal News Radio.
He also noted in the interview that OPM’s orchestration strategy aims to provide data feeds for a government-wide continuous diagnostics and monitoring program run by the Department of Homeland Security.
