Page 33 - FCW, March/April 2020

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TIC 3.0 and zero- trust networking
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency wants to address zero- trust cybersecurity strategies in the latest iteration of its Trusted Internet Connections policy.
“Everyone wants to talk about zero trust,” said Sean Connelly, TIC program manager and senior cybersecurity architect at CISA, during an FCW cloud security conference in February.
The Department of Homeland Security’s CISA issued a draft of the third iteration of TIC policy guidance last December. The documents include a TIC 3.0 program handbook, a reference architecture, a use-case handbook and an overlay handbook that can offer specific technology- based solutions.
Some of those who commented on the draft TIC 3.0 policy raised concerns about how it would work with emerging zero- trust cybersecurity frameworks, which
don’t automatically admit users inside network perimeters.
Under TIC 3.0, agencies can assign security “zones” with degrees of trust that vary from high to low. Within those zones, users can share data, but commenters said that capability is fundamentally at odds with the “trust no one” basis of zero-trust principles.
Connelly said TIC 3.0 is more closely aligned with zero-trust frameworks than TIC 2.0, and CISA officials are looking for ways to bring the two even closer together.
“We understand the interest in it,” he said. “It’s possible we may be able to tie to the remote-user use case, which is in the \[Office of Management and Budget\] memo.”
750,000 civilian DOD employees could be affected by a White House memo allowing the suspension of collective
bargaining agreements
FITARA-like scorecard for security clearances?
The government has significantly reduced the backlog of security clearance investigations in the past two years, but concerns linger about lengthy adjudications and reciprocity between agencies.
William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told lawmakers that the backlog has shrunk
said the effort is “off to a good start.” However, despite his optimism about the long-term prospects of the move, Berteau and others say there are still problems with the way clearances are adjudicated, and many agencies do not dedicate enough staff to handle
workloads in a timely manner.
After the roundtable discussion, Connolly told FCW that his committee would like to see “reasonable uniform standards” for agencies to better handle both issues. He also floated the possibility of scoring agencies’ performance along the lines of the committee’s scorecard for compliance with the Federal IT Acquisition
Reform Act.
“That’s actually been a tool for
modernizing government and keeping the pressure on and supporting people who are reform agents within government, knowing we have their backs and are going to be prodding their bosses to go along with their reforms,” Connolly said. “So maybe we come up with something like that on this subject.”
— Derek B. Johnson
from 725,000 cases in 2018 to approximately 231,000 as of January 2020. Officials at the Defense Department, which took over responsibility for background investigations from the Office of Personnel Management last year, have said automation and continuous vetting helped clear the logjam.
Rep. Gerry Connolly
“It’s possible we may be able to tie to the remote-user use case, which is in the \[Office of Management and Budget\] memo.”
SEAN CONNELLY,
TIC PROGRAM MANAGER
— Mark Rockwell
At a Feb. 24 roundtable discussion hosted by George Mason University, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said he and other members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Government Operations Subcommittee were initially dubious of the shift from OPM to DOD. But David Berteau, president of the Professional Services Council, an industry group representing more than 400 large and small contractors,
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@Hanscom_AFB
Congratulations to our client John O’Grady, Acting Director, Digital Services Division at U.S. Department of Health and Human Services! @HHSGov. He’s among the 2020 Federal 100 award winners announced by @FCWnow http://ow.ly/X1ny50yxWfY
9:54 AM - 14 Feb 2019
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