Council advises architecture security

CIO Council

In this season of resolutions, the CIO Council has reminded agencies to secure their enterprise architecture software tools and the sensitive information those tools collect.

Enterprise architecture software aligns information technology investments within and across agencies, providing up-to-date inventories of systems. Experts have called the tools critical to the success of e-government.

"The detailed information they and associated databases contain regarding agency assets and processes — should be considered mission critical," officials from the council wrote in a Jan. 2 letter to chief information and security officers. "These applications must be appropriately secured to protect against the harm resulting from the loss, misuse or unauthorized access to or modification of information."

The council advised agencies to discuss plans to secure the software as part of their next quarterly updates to the Office of Management and Budget. They should do so, officials noted, in compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act. FISMA, passed as part of the E-Government Act last month, updates the Government Information Security Reform Act of 2000, which expired Nov. 29, 2002. GISRA combined many federal security policies into one law.