News

October 1^st marks the beginning of the 18^th annual Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Once again, the Federal Cybersecurity Information Security Officer (CISO) Council is proud to reinforce its commitment to safe and secure online behavior. Remote work continues to be the ‘new normal’, and cybercriminals are ramping up their focus on this expanded attack surface. Phishing attacks have been on the rise for decades and cybercriminals seek to take advantage of weary workers. This method of attack continues to be one of the most dangerous threats to an organization because is the easiest way to deliver malicious or weaponized payloads.

As we welcome the Fall season, we also welcome National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM.) As the Co-Chair of the Federal CISO council I find NCSAM to be a time of reflection over the past year and what we have accomplished and how we have grown as a Council and a federal Cybersecurity workforce. By any measure this was a year for the books.

The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) framework is a cybersecurity workforce framework that categorizes and describes the cybersecurity workforce. The 2017 OPM memo directing agencies to assign cybersecurity codes to IT, Cybersecurity, and Cyber-Related functions led to the development of the NICE framework. The Federal Technology Investment Management (FTIM) Community of Practice (CoP) identified that the NICE framework can help agencies to allocate internal labor resources to Towers within the Technology Business Management (TBM).

Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) is a comprehensive solution-based contract vehicle to address all federal agency IT telecommunications and infrastructure requirements. It reduces agency costs and acquisition time by leveraging an existing contract and allows agencies to focus on missions. EIS is required for GSA to fulfill its Congressional mandate to provide telecommunications services for the Federal Government.