Risk. What to Do With It.

By Kathryn Daily, CISSP, CAP, RDRP Recently our regional grocery store chain notified their employees and customers that they had a data breach involving some HR data and pharmacy records. The breach was caused by a vulnerability in the Accellion file sharing system which the grocery chain immediately stopped using. As I was perusing the…

Cybersecurity Framework – Is it relevant to Federal/DoD organizations?

By Lon J. Berman, CISSP, RDRP Just when folks were beginning to get somewhat comfortable … or, at least, familiar … with the Risk Management Framework (RMF), along come our friends at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) throwing another framework our way! The Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) has actually been in development since…

Security Control Inheritance

By Lon J. Berman CISSP, RDRP CNSSI 4009 defines Security Control Inheritance as “a situation in which an information system or application receives protection from security controls (or portions of security controls) that are developed, implemented, and assessed, authorized, and monitored by entities other than those responsible for the system or application”. The typical example…

Ask Dr. RMF

Dear Dr. RMF, Government IT Security staff work with systems owners to make sure that all systems in the agency have implemented the proper Risk Management Framework (RMF) controls. Organizations have deployed technologies like eMASS, XACTA, and RSA to manage the workflow and documentation for the RMF for their systems. Yet, there is confusion about…