Federal Executive Briefing: Cybersecurity

Proactive Approaches For Getting Ahead of Cyber Risk

Defense and federal networks continue to be successfully attacked, often via cybersecurity blind spots that enable hackers and malware to gain entry to data. These blind spots consist of aging software and hardware assets that reside on federal networks and desktops that are end-of-life (EOL), not approved, or not properly configured. Illustrating the scale of the problem, Federal CIO Tony Scott said that, between 2016 and 2019, more than $3 billion of Federal IT assets will become end of life. That means no patch management, no upgrades, no vendor service or support. And that’s in addition to the extensive inventory of assets that are already EOL on federal and defense networks.

Many agencies have scanning and inventory tools to assist with this problem, but they typically are incapable of providing a single, aggregated, actionable view of cybersecurity vulnerabilities and ranking them based on severity of risk. In far too many cases, federal and defense agencies simply do not know what assets they have on their networks and where their highest-priority vulnerabilities exist. The result is a cybersecurity posture that is reactive and always playing catch-up.

This event will examine how Federal agencies are addressing this challenge so they can be more proactive in their cybersecurity postures and approaches. To view the agenda, please visit: http://www.atarcfedbrief.org

Attendees will learn about challenges that federal and defense agencies face as well as approaches they are taking to:

• Create greater visibility into their IT infrastructures to understand where legacy-related cyber vulnerabilities exist.
• Proactively manage cybersecurity risks related to end-of-life (EOL) assets.
• Prioritize which IT vulnerabilities to fix first.
• Develop and apply actionable and comprehensive IT asset data to advance proactive risk-mitigation strategies.
• Apply data in support of cybersecurity compliance and audit requirements.
• Continuously monitor IT assets for cybersecurity risk.

Hosted by the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC) in collaboration with BDNA Corporation