Federal CIO Tony Scott has outlined the developments and opportunities in the government’s cybersecurity efforts following the 30-day review of federal civilian and military IT systems in the past month.
Scott wrote in a White House blog entry posted Friday that during the “cybersecurity sprint,” agencies worked to increase the adoption of strong authentication measures such as Personal Identity Verification cards.
He said agencies boosted strong authentication for both privileged and unprivileged users to 72 percent, which is a 30-percent increase from their last reported data on Performance.gov.
He also noted that work continues on limiting the number of privileged users at agencies, training employees to identify and report suspicious activity such as phishing attempts and implementing the Department of Homeland Security‘s Einstein and Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation programs.
“The best way for any industry executive or agency leader to ensure the security of their networks is to have the resources they need and the certainty to deploy those resources,” Scott wrote.
He indicated that these resources include budgetary and legislative support from Congress as well as an upcoming government-industry “Cybersecurity Sprint Strategy and Implementation Plan” based on a review of current policies, practices and procedures on cybersecurity.
“Cyber threats cannot be eliminated entirely, but they can be managed much more effectively,” he said.
