After suffering a number of network intrusions over the last year, the State Department was ready to fight back. The department issued a request for information from cybersecurity experts to develop a set of “playbooks” around the best practices for both defensive and offensive cyber tactics.
However, as of Sept. 9, the RFI has been rescinded.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed that the RFI had been pulled but declined to comment on why or whether the department plans to reissue an amended solicitation in the future.
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Originally, the department was looking for private cybersecurity companies to chime in on several specific areas in order to narrow and refine the scope of the playbooks. After the information gathering process, the department planned on issuing a solicitation to develop a full set of playbooks on everything from hardware security to cloud computing.
The playbooks would have been general enough to guide the agency’s response to a variety of situations but specific to State’s mission and IT architecture.
Whether the State Department ultimately intends to follow up with a solicitation — or even develop a set of playbooks without industry input — is unclear. The State spokesperson said only that the department is “continuously looking for ways to improve our cybersecurity.”
