Category Archives: OMB

Budget would boost DHS cyber efforts in NCCIC, CDM

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President Trump’s budget proposal, unveiled Tuesday, would boost spending on the Department of Homeland Security’s 24-hour digital-attack watch center by almost $50 million and more than double the funding for a governmentwide online security tools program to $279 million. The proposal would also treble the size of the tiny team of DHS cybersecurity advisers who work with key businesses across the country. Despite these increases, not every tech element of the department got its funding goosed. Research and development in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate was slashed by $100 million and the allocation for the CIO office was also down $60 million. In documents released by the department and the White House Office of Management and Budget, the administration says it is asking for $3.28 billion for DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, which includes most of the department’s cyber functions. It would be an increase of $196 million over fiscal 2017. The […]

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OMB stakes out central role in cyber, IT modernization

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The White House Office of Management and Budget will be at the center of the Trump administration’s move to modernize and secure federal computer networks, the government’s senior-most IT official said Wednesday. The agency is at the hinge where several important IT initiatives meet the federal budgeting process, explained acting federal CIO Margie Graves. Not only does it help implement the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, or FISMA, but it also has new tasks under the cybersecurity executive order signed recently. Under the EO, every federal agency or department has to conduct a risk assessment using the Cybersecurity Framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and then submit it to the OMB director and the Homeland Security secretary. That process, she told the Public Sector Innovation Summit presented by VMware, was the essential underpinning for both security and modernization efforts because it identifies the areas where investment is needed.  It also had the added benefit […]

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Sen. Warner wants action on WannaCry patching from DHS, OMB

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Democratic Sen. Mark Warner has written to federal officials asking for details about how agencies patched their systems to protect them against the fast-spreading WannaCry ransomware. White House homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert told reporters during the daily briefing Monday that no federal systems had been infected, but Warner noted in his letter that despite a National Institute of Standards and Technology recommendation that security-related software updates “be installed within a defined timeframe (in many cases seven to 30 days for critical patches),” the Government Accountability Office last year found “numerous instances where agencies failed to comply with those deadlines.” Microsoft included a fix for the vulnerability in a regularly scheduled patch in mid-March. Over the weekend, the company took the unprecedented step of releasing a patch for several discontinued but still widely used software products, including Windows XP. In the letter, released Monday afternoon, the Virginia senator asks Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Office of […]

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Sen. Warner wants action on WannaCry patching from DHS, OMB

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Democratic Sen. Mark Warner has written to federal officials asking for details about how agencies patched their systems to protect them against the fast-spreading WannaCry ransomware. White House homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert told reporters during the daily briefing Monday that no federal systems had been infected, but Warner noted in his letter that despite a National Institute of Standards and Technology recommendation that security-related software updates “be installed within a defined timeframe (in many cases seven to 30 days for critical patches),” the Government Accountability Office last year found “numerous instances where agencies failed to comply with those deadlines.” Microsoft included a fix for the vulnerability in a regularly scheduled patch in mid-March. Over the weekend, the company took the unprecedented step of releasing a patch for several discontinued but still widely used software products, including Windows XP. In the letter, released Monday afternoon, the Virginia senator asks Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Office of […]

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Trump budget: FBI would get an extra $61M to fight cybercrime and break encryption

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President Donald Trump’s budget blueprint for the federal government proposes a $61 million increase for the FBI and Justice Department in fiscal 2018 to better track terrorist communications and combat cybercriminals. “The FBI would devote resources toward its world-class cadre of special agents and intelligence analysts, as well as invest $61 million more to fight terrorism and combat foreign intelligence and cyber threats and address public safety and national security risks that result from malicious actors’ use of encrypted products and services,” the blueprint states. The FBI is one of the few agencies that would see significant increases under the budget, which emphasizes national security and law enforcement. The Environmental Protection Agency and State Department, for example, would see drastic cuts. Trump’s proposed plan is designed to effectively increase the FBI’s overall funding by a total of $249 million, or 3 percent, above the current 2017 budget. Beyond cyber operations, a majority of the […]

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White House releases 2016 agency cyberattack stats, claiming progress

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The White House Office of Management and Budget released fiscal 2016 statistics on cybersecurity measures and incidents at U.S. agencies Friday, using new methodologies that make comparison with prior years essentially impossible, but nonetheless saying the government had made progress. For the first time, agencies were required to report only incidents that affected their operations, and to break those incidents down based on the attack vector used. “This is a shift from the previous reporting methodology,” wrote Grant Schneider, the acting federal chief information security officer, in a blog post unveiling the findings. He added that the shift meant “that the FY 2016 incident data is not comparable to prior years’ incident data.” But he stressed the new reporting requirement OMB, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies “to focus on incidents that may impact operations.” Of the 30,899 incidents that agencies reported, only 16 were determined by agency heads to be “major […]

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Experts: Trump to follow Obama’s lead on cyber policy

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In cybersecurity policy, if in nothing else, there is likely to be a great deal of continuity between the Trump presidency and its predecessor, scholars and executives said Wednesday — seizing in particular on a renewed push for federal IT modernization expected from the incoming administration. “What you see in the draft [executive order on cybersecurity the administration has […]

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