Tag Archives: DoD

Ready or Not CMMC is Here

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Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) sets security standards for contractors working with the Department of Defense (DoD) to ensure the data they interact with is protected. The standards have been in place since the introduction of the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation (DFARS) in 2015, and now, 10 years later, a more formalized compliance process is being implemented.

Starting October 1, 2025, the CMMC clause will start to be used in DoD contracts. This clause requires contractors to align their security practices with the CMMC level required by the contract. While contractors have been required to meet rigorous security standards for some time, whether they did was determined primarily through self-attestation. This roll-out introduces the need for third-party validation of compliance claims, ensuring the security of the defense supply chain. Continue reading →

How Government Workforce Policies and Programs Support the Most Vulnerable

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With nearly three million people in the federal workforce, the government has to be prepared to support employees with a wide variety of needs. With a workforce that resembles the population as a whole, the policies that the government puts in place can be used as an example for private sector companies as well as for organizations supporting our nation's more vulnerable populations.

The following three programs illustrate the ways the government is supporting its workforce and citizens when they are in vulnerable situations. Continue reading →

FITARA Goes to the Cloud, Grades Come Down to the Ground

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The 17th edition of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard featured a revamped list of measurements to illustrate federal agency progress against current modernization goals. This latest scorecard introduced two new categories - Cloud Computing and CIO Investment Evaluation - while dropping the measurement of compliance with data center modernization, something all agencies have completed.

This reshuffling of measurement criteria resulted in lower grades for 11 agencies. Twelve agencies saw their grades unchanged. The Department of Defense (DoD) was the sole group earning a higher grade, rising from a C to a B. These drops are not necessarily a concerning indicator, but rather a re-baselining of where agencies stand in terms of modern digital government goals. Continue reading →

New Tech Means New Acquisition Strategies for DoD

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With more and more battles being fought in cyberspace, the pace of warfare has accelerated. However, the systems that support our warfighter were not designed to support the speed or types of products and services needed for modern defense. This year's AFCEA West Conference is focused on ensuring acquisition and readiness are on pace to meet global security demands. Ensuring our warfighters get the tools they need when they need them is a critical effort requiring evolution and reform of defense acquisition.

Improved Private Sector Coordination

A congressional hearing in late 2023 discussed the need for the Department of Defense (DoD) to tap into the innovation taking place in the private sector to stay competitive with global adversaries. A draft of the national defense industrial strategy stated that the defense industrial base "does not possess the capacity, capability, responsiveness, or resilience required to satisfy the full range of military production needs at speed and scale." Continue reading →

DoD’s Efforts to Make Emerging Technology Established Technology

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The U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) shift from a focus on counterterrorism to one of near-peer rivals has highlighted the need to incorporate emerging technologies into the DoD faster than ever before. To keep up with the technological advances of peer nations, it is critical that the DoD speed the time to the field of technologies that can give our troops an advantage in terms of intelligence, data sharing, and visibility. But in this need for speed, the security and the reliability of these solutions cannot be ignored.

DoD is successfully striking the balance of speed, innovation, and reliability with several recent implementations of emerging technology. Continue reading →