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Trending
DHS CIO clarifies
comments on
open source
Some IT professionals at the Depart- ment of Homeland Security raised eyebrows over comments on GitHub that suggested a proposed federal open-source policy could result in the “mafia having a copy of all FBI system code” or could give terrorists “access to air traffic control software.” The comments were posted on April 11 and attributed to the CIO’s office.
However, DHS CIO Luke McCor- mack filed his own official views a week later, noting that “prior com- ments do not represent DHS policy or views.”
The draft policy, released for public comment in March, asked agencies to participate in a three-year pilot pro- gram that would require publishing at least 20 percent of their custom code. The goal is to save money and spur innovation by making the software used by agencies more open, shar- able and reusable.
In the new comments, McCormack applauded the open-source policy’s objectives of saving time and money but said he was concerned “that the requirement of releasing 20 percent of custom code will encourage releas- ing code without thinking thoughtful- ly” about how to get the most value from it.
McCormack also countered the idea that there were security risks inherent to open source.
“When managed appropriately, releasing code as [open-source soft- ware] and engaging with the commu- nity can have extensive cybersecurity benefits,” he said. “Security through obscurity is not true security: We cannot depend on vulnerabilities not being exploited just because they have not been discovered yet.”
— Mark Rockwell
22of24
agency FITARA implementation plans had received OMB approval by mid-April
Cyber commission looks to the next administration and beyond
President Barack Obama’s new cybersecurity commission has grand ambitions that include shaping how American society approaches Inter-
Kiersten Todt, the Commerce Department official who is serving as the commission’s executive director, told FCW the group’s immediate task is to refine the scope of its work, and how the group defines the issues will
in part determine how suc- cessful it is.
The commission is sched- uling five public workshops to field ideas for addressing vexing national challenges. Todt said the commission
hopes to draw on input from
net security under the next tration and beyond.
adminis-
“Consider your recom- mendations as a down pay-
ment for the next adminis-
tration, for the next decade,”
Lisa Monaco, the White
House’s top counterterror-
ism adviser, told the inaugu-
ral meeting of the Commis-
sion on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. “Think of your audience as society as a whole, not only the fed- eral government.”
The commission, which Obama established by executive order in February, has until Dec. 1 to deliver recommendations in a range of areas, including identity management, the cybersecurity of the Internet of Things, training the federal workforce and edu- cating the public.
Lisa Monaco
startups at those workshops. In her remarks, Monaco touched on the federal government’s legacy IT sys- tems, which can be costly to maintain
and vulnerable to hacking.
“We have a culture of bureaucratic
stasis, if you will, that does not incen- tivize cybersecurity,” she said, adding that agency leaders should think more like corporate CEOs when it comes to managing cyber risk.
— Sean Lyngaas
INK TANK
8 May 15, 2016 FCW.COM
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