SAN FRANCISCO -- The federal government has made little progress in improving its security grade under the Federal Information Security Management Act. The problem lies with Congress and the Office of Management and Budget, which have failed to use the FISMA process effectively so that agencies measure security procedures, leading security experts said Feb. 6 at the RSA Conference.
Speaking at a session titled “The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) – Should Congress Get an ‘F’?” Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, and Bruce Brody, vice president of information assurance at CACI, said it is time to improve the process.
FISMA must evolve from largely paper-based compliance processes to technology-based security processes, they said.
FISMA consists of a set of directives governing what security responsibilities federal entities have. It outlines oversight and management roles for the implementation of those directives. As a result, agencies must establish an integrated, risk-based information security program, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has to set centralized standards and guidance for agencies. OMB oversees agency reporting for FISMA. The overall agency grade in 2005 was a D+, and industry experts don’t expect the result to be much better for 2006 when the grade is released in a few weeks.
The stakes are high, Paller said. Organized crime is stealing billions of dollars, terrorists have discovered cyber crime as a way to raise money to buy bombs and foreign countries are stealing critical military and economic data.
Paller said he senses that many taxpayers don’t realize “a lot of [their] money is being thrown away.” He hoped that the conference session would motivate attendees to encourage federal policy-makers to use continuous monitoring of metrics that actually measure security effectiveness. Also, he wants to encourage policy-makers to use the government’s $65 billion information technology procurement power to persuade vendors to build security into systems federal agencies acquire.
To improve security, managers must measure what people need to be able to do. Today, agencies measure periodic certification and accreditation reports, checklists, and security awareness attendance.
“If we want to fix the problem, we’ll measure continuously and we will use attack-based metrics,” Paller said. Industry should stop blaming the users and build security into systems, he added.
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