The Office of Management and Budget is using the budget process to force agencies to implement software that continuously monitors their networks.
The OMB gave agency chief information officers (CIOs) until the end of fiscal 2012 to install the monitoring software, according a report by Federal News Radio 1500 AM.
The deadline was contained in a guidance sent to CIOs by federal CIO Vivek Kundra as part of the 2012 budget request, the report said.
In addition, OMB instructed agencies to use the CyberScope tool to submit reports on compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) by Sept. 30, 2011. The OMB had originally given federal agencies until Nov. 15, 2010, to implement CyberScope.
One federal official was quoted by the report as saying: “I don’t see how people will do this. There hasn’t been buy-in across the board. Some agencies such as State, NASA and Justice will be able to do it. But others didn’t want to do it and haven’t started.”
The official added that some agencies that received an “A” on their FISMA scorecard will struggle with CyberScope because it is no longer just about filling out paperwork.
Federal CIOs and chief information security officers (CISO) have been reluctant to use the CyberScope tool, which was installed to streamline the FISMA reporting process. According to a survey conducted in July last year by MeriTalk, 85% of federal CIOs and CISOs had not used the tool.
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