Tony Scott drops the new federal cyber strategy

On Oct. 30, federal CIO Tony Scott pushed out the Cybersecurity Strategy and Implementation Plan that defines a "major" cybersecurity breach and directs agencies to report such breaches to Congress within seven days of discovery.  Scott also unveiled updated Federal Information Security Modernization Act guidance.

In a blog post, Scott called the CSIP a "comprehensive review" based on analysis of "[more than] 100 experts from across the government and private industry."

The plan builds on results from the summer's cyber sprint, and has been in the works at least since this summer.

"The team's review made clear that we must continue to double down on this Administration's broad strategy to enhance federal cybersecurity and fundamentally overhaul information security practices, policies, and governance," Scott wrote.

Scott laid out the five main objectives of the new strategy:

• Prioritized identification and protection of high-value assets and information;
• Timely detection of and rapid response to cyber incidents;
• Rapid recovery from incidents when they occur and accelerated adoption of lessons learned from the sprint assessment;
• Recruitment and retention of the most highly qualified cybersecurity workforce talent the federal government can bring to bear; and
• Efficient and effective acquisition and deployment of existing and emerging technology.

Key dates from the strategy include requiring all agencies to identify and report high-value assets by Nov. 13, 2015; rolling out Einstein 3A to all agencies by the end of 2015; and a government-wide cyber incident response contract vehicle by April 30, 2016, with guidance on agencies recovering from cyber breaches due from the National Institute of Standards and Technology by June 30 of next year.

CSIP: Key milestones

Click on the image to open a larger version in a new browser window.