Spotlight: Information Security Continuous Monitoring

By Lon Berman, CISSP No longer just a technical issue, instead a strategic program to manage cybersecurity risk. Targeted cyber attacks are a strategic organizational problem. Cyber attackers are more sophisticated than ever before, and it has become vitally important to understand how to manage risk and implement a continuous monitoring program.  More than just…

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Nothing Neutral About Net Neutrality

The volume of discussion and debate surrounding so-called ‘net neutrality’ in recent days has increased dramatically.  And, as usual, it is a polarizing topic.  The President has weighed in on the issue, urging the FCC to explicitly deny service providers the right to rate-limit the Internet’s content.  His ‘request’ has been met with a venomous…

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Security Control Spotlight—By the Numbers

By Lon J. Berman, CISSP of BAI, Inc. In this issue’s “Spotlight”, we’re not going to focus on any specific controls or families, but rather on a comparison of RMF controls and DIACAP controls. The majority of DoD information systems are currently categorized under DIACAP as “MAC II Sensitive” or “MAC III Sensitive”. These categorizations…

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Top Ten—Sources of RMF Policy and Guidance

By Annette Leonard of BAI, Inc. RMF-related policies and guidance come from a plethora of sources within the seemingly-convoluted federal landscape. We believe a good understanding of these sources will be helpful as you move forward in your RMF implementation. Here, then is our “Top Ten” list of RMF policy and guidance providers. 10. US…

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Significant Update to NIST SP 800-53A

By Kathryn M. Farrish, CISSP of BAI, Inc. At long last, NIST has finally released a draft copy of the updated version of SP 800-53A, entitled Assessing Security and Privacy Controls in Federal Information Systems and Organizations. This is an important document in the RMF “document library” because it contains the “how to” for assessing…

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RMF Transition—What is the Real Timeline?

By Lon Berman of BAI, Inc. Now that RMF is official DoD policy, every DoD system owner needs to begin planning their “transition” from DIACAP. In order to plan and execute the transition, system owners need the answers to three basic questions: What does the transition process entail? When do I need to begin the…

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Spotlight: Transitioning to the Risk Management Framework (RMF)

With the publication of revised DoD Instruction 8510.01, adoption of the Risk Management Framework (RMF) by DoD has begun.  DoD programs are busy planning and implementing strategies for transitioning from DIACAP to “RMF for DoD IT”. What Efforts are Taking Place in Support of the RMF Transition? Tier 1: DoD Enterprise RMF Knowledge Service –…

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