By this time next year, officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency plan to offer a revamped Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program that will improve security while relieving agencies’ compliance reporting burdens, as intended.
“As we see it, in [fiscal year] ‘21, we'll really be able to show the promise of CDM,” said Kevin Cox, a program manager overseeing updates to the CISA operation.
Cox and fellow CDM program manager Judy Baltensperger spoke during an event hosted by MeriTalk Thursday where they detailed their approach, including through pilots with several agencies, to deploying a new dashboard system and accompanying tools by Sept. 30.
CDM initially launched in 2013 with a blanket purchase agreement contract for companies—system integrators—to supply agencies with tools including diagnostic sensors and dashboards so they could more effectively prioritize addressing their vulnerabilities. The system would also feed data automatically being collected from the agencies to a central dashboard to inform a governmentwide assessment of risk by the Department of Homeland Security.
A big incentive officials articulated for agencies to participate fully in the program is that they would be able to use the data collected by the sensors to inform reports they’re required to make to the Office of Management and Budget about their risk management activities.
But a Government Accountability Office report in August showed that agencies hadn’t properly inventoried their equipment. And when the sensors detected and recorded vulnerabilities, the already poor, noisy data did not reflect when they had been mitigated.
Baltensperger said a change in vendors for the dashboard system—they are now using a company called Elastic—as well as new tools and principles, will make the system more efficien ..
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