Mary-Louise Hoffman
A task force formed by the Information Technology Industry Council‘s IT Alliance for Public Sector division has recommended multiple approaches for the U.S. government to bolster the federal cyber posture and ward off potential threats.
ITAPS on Thursday sent the recommendations to Beth Cobert, acting director at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Federal CIO Tony Scott and White House Cybersecurity Coordinator J. Michael Daniel.
The task force comprises cybersecurity professionals from 20 technology companies and urged agencies to prioritize the criticality of their enterprise systems and data as well as make IT security training mandatory for agency employees and contractors.
The group said agencies should also develop a security framework and risk mitigation plans as part of their acquisition processes.
It also proposed creating a new online portal where agencies, industry and the general public can brainstorm and communicate ideas to secure government networks.
The government should also appoint a privacy officer to coordinate responses to any incident or breach that may expose personally identifiable information, according to the task force.
Task force participants include AT&T, CenturyLink, CGI, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, EMC, Science Applications International Corp., SAP, Symantec and VMware.
