Dave Powner and Mark Peters, respectively an executive director and a cyber specialist at Mitre, said they believe Congress should align proposed legislation to reform the Federal Information Security Modernization Act with cybersecurity priorities and strategies from the White House.

“The top area where Congress and the administration need to align is zero-trust implementation,” Powner and Peters wrote in a joint guest piece for Nextgov published Friday.

They noted a codification of zero trust principles would drive a sustainable and consistent approach to cybersecurity across the federal government and urged lawmakers to simplify auditing, reporting and oversight of security practices at agencies.

Powner and Peters cited an October 2021 technical paper that suggested eight ways government could transform system implementation, maintenance and protection.

“As H.R. 6497 moves toward the floor, there are opportunities to incorporate these recommendations into the bill and to work for their inclusion into any negotiated conference bill.”

They added that cyber defense, supply chain risk management and threat-hunting efforts are key to improving the prevention and detection of security incidents in the government.

Luci Holemans, Air Traffic Organization cybersecurity group manager at the Federal Aviation Administration, said FAA is transitioning to a zero trust strategy that involves network monitoring and authentication and segmentation of resources and users to maintain safety and resiliency amid a rapidly evolving threat environment, Via Satellite reported Friday.

She noted that FAA is assessing several enterprise cyber capabilities to safeguard mission critical systems, including National Airspace System software security management, security enterprise asset management and managed enterprise security monitoring.

“Instead of having the different systems and programs take something that’s been developed and putting it into an operational environment, we’ve created an environment within the operational area that allows those systems and services to get those new pieces of software where it’s already been tested and checked for any kind of malware,” Holemans said of NAS software security management.

Holemans highlighted the need for cybersecurity requirements to be embedded early into the system; the importance of cyber collaboration between government, academia and industry; the need to accelerate acquisition processes to address cyberthreats; and FAA’s plans to ensure cybersecurity with unmanned aircraft systems.