Casey Coleman, group vice president for federal civilian agencies at Unisys, has called for new approaches for the protection of federal data and networks.
“[Traditional] perimeter-based defenses are not going to keep attackers out 100 percent of the time,” Coleman wrote in a guest piece published Tuesday on the Federal Times.
She said IT teams should work to reduce the damage of cyber attacks in case of a systems breach as well as continue efforts to keep attackers at bay.
Coleman also highlighted what Federal CIO Tony Scott calls the “secure by design” concept, which puts security as part of the production stage for IT systems rather than adding security measures at a later time.
She said the “secure by design” concept requires building system architectures to work in the cloud, implementing multi-factor authentication and utilizing software-defined or virtualized networks, among others.
According to Coleman, the government has also pursued other approaches to address cybersecurity challenges, including the planned hiring of a federal chief information security officer and policy directives such as the Cybersecurity National Action Plan.
Together with the “secure by design” approach, these activities by the government cover the people, process and technology factors that impact IT initiatives, Coleman said.
