The chief information officer of the Small Business Administration would like to see changes to the cybersecurity grading scale used to rate agency\u2019s IT management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At an American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council event held July 31 at the Department of Agriculture, Maria Roat, the CIO of the Small Business Administration, said that she would like to see changes made to how agencies are graded on the cybersecurity scorecards of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, better known as FITARA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Currently, agencies\u2019 cybersecurity grades are evaluated by averaging an agency\u2019s compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and the Office of Management and Budget\u2019s cross-agency priority (CAP) goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat is not representative of the cyber score,\u201d Roat said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roat argued that she had great visibility into her cyber posture and that the current score did not reflect the security levels achieved by SBA. She said SBA has met six CAP goals and is on the \u201ccusp of hitting seven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can see everything using cloud-based tools,\u201d Roat said. \u201cAll of our cloud environment, all the way down to our mobile devices and desktops. I can see all of that and I have visibility. I know when someone is on foreign travel and they have not been approved and someone logs in somewhere from outside the U.S. … and I can cut them off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roat said SBA\u2019s use of AI, data collection and overall visibility isn\u2019t accurately captured based on how it\u2019s currently measured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe FISMA score is just the FISMA score,\u201d Roat said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the last FITARA scorecard, the Small Business Administration received a \u201cD\u201d grade on the cybersecurity section. But, recently, SBA has been gained recognition for its digital transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gary Washington, the CIO of the USDA, agreed he expects that cybersecurity reporting will be a big part of \u201cconversation\u201d around FITARA changes over the next few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite frustrations on the current cyber scoring, the CIOs did praise the legislation for how it has changed governance within the departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re on the same page on IT,\u201d Washington said, talking about his relationship with his CFO, budget director and other C-suite officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it became law, FITARA put agency CIOs in charge of agency\u2019s IT investments. Roat said that it\u2019s given her more say in the budget process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFITARA\u2019s given the CIOs a seat at the table,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some agency CIOs think the FITARA scorecard isn’t grading their cybersecurity posture fairly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":68235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":29,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,29,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3252],"class_list":["post-22226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"F6MH32F6HZBOZFGQQKO2G7VC3I","arc_canonical_url":"\/it-networks\/2019\/07\/31\/can-agency-cyber-evaluations-be-improved\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n