Staying Ahead of the Bad Guys: Investing in Cybersecurity

Agencies are challenged to move more and more services online, become more transparent, and leverage new streams of data from the Internet of Things (IoT) for better decision making, all while securing the systems and the data they hold. If that is not challenging enough, cyber threats against all of these efforts are continually evolving. A series of strategies and ongoing guidance are helping agencies prioritize work and budget requests to make the most impactful investments in their cybersecurity infrastructure.

The National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) provides broad guidance to help position the United States to build a digital ecosystem that is more easily and inherently defensible, resilient, and aligned with its values. Efforts to do so are organized around five pillars:

1) Defend Critical Infrastructure

2) Disrupt and Dismantle Threat Actors

3) Shape Market Forces to Drive Security and Resilience

4) Invest in a Resilient Future

5) Forge International Partnerships to Pursue Shared Goals

Agencies should align all efforts to these pillars to ensure that cybersecurity plans will be funded. More specifically, this includes:

• Demonstrating a "Secure by Design" approach. This means the security of the customers is a core business requirement, not just a technical feature of any solution acquired. Secure by Design principles should be implemented during the design phase of a product's development lifecycle to reduce the number of exploitable flaws before they are used by the public at large.
• Prioritizing technology modernization of systems reaching end of life or end of service. It is critical to find a way to eliminate the dependency on legacy technology and move into a more sustainable architecture.
• Migrating off systems that are unable to meet zero trust requirements.
• Solidifying patch management processes for High Value Assets.

GovEvents and GovWhitePapers feature a wide variety of cybersecurity resources that address the NCS pillars to help agencies plan their defense.

• 14th Annual Billington Cybersecurity Summit (September 5-8, 2023; Washington, DC) - With a theme of "Advancing Cybersecurity's Impact in an Age of Heightened Risk," this event brings together senior leadership from the U.S. government and allied partners along with industry and academic experts to discuss the challenges and solutions for today's threat landscape.
• Infosec Nashville Cybersecurity Conference (September 26-27, 2023; Nashville, TN) - This event brings together technologists and security experts, ranging from students to CISOs to discuss current security challenges and includes a hack-a-thon as part of the event.
• MSSN CTRL (October 5-6, 2023; Arlington, VA) - This cybersecurity conference focuses on innovative practices and how they are changing the way security has been traditionally practiced for the past decade. The conference aims to provide deep technical training and hands-on sessions that will equip attendees with the right methods and tools to protect their organizations or customers.
• Critical Infrastructure Cyber Security Summit (October 20, 2023; virtual) - Designed for executives in charge of the protection of our nation's critical infrastructure and data, this event discusses the latest cyber threat landscape and evaluates the industry's most cutting-edge solutions.
• Cyber Solutions Fest 2023: SOC & SOAR (October 25, 2023; online) - This event will explore implementations via the lens of people, process, and technology. Technology that enables people to implement processes effectively will feature heavily as vendors highlight actual customer deployments and their implementations of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• Accelerate Cybersecurity Mandate Compliance (white paper) - In the push to comply with a multitude of cybersecurity mandates, federal agencies are faced with challenges of cost, complexity, and delays to achieve full compliance. Failure to fully implement the requirements of these mandates, however, is not an option when critical infrastructure, public services, and national security are at risk from an ever-expanding threat landscape.
• Crucial Considerations for Federal Government Cybersecurity Strategies (white paper) - ICIT conducted candid interviews with some of the brightest minds in national security, cybersecurity, and technology to explore crucial considerations for government cybersecurity leaders developing and implementing strategic plans.

To stay up to date on all cybersecurity trends and tactics, visit GovEvents and GovWhitePapers for additional events and resources.