Federal cyber security pros lack confidence in FISMA

[Audrey McNeil <audrey () riskbasedsecurity com>]

http://net-security.org/secworld.php?id=15627

A report by MeriTalk and NetApp examines the state of cyber security at
Federal agencies and looks at whether the Federal Information Security
Management Act (FISMA) is hurting or helping agencies improve cyber
security and protect data.

According to the report, Federal cyber security professionals lack
confidence in FISMA, and do not believe their agencies’ current cyber
security solutions are sufficient and sustainable.

Federal agencies face cyber threats from every angle. In the past 12
months, agencies defended against insider threats or leaks (64 percent),
non-state actors (60 percent), and state-sponsored threats (48 percent).
Given the growing number and increasing sophistication of the attacks, just
one in five (22 percent) cyber security professionals rate their agency’s
cyber security solutions as sufficient and sustainable.

Although FISMA is designed to aid agencies in addressing these threats, it
may be doing more harm than good. Just 53 percent of Federal cyber security
professionals say FISMA has improved security at their agency, while 86
percent report that FISMA compliance increases costs. In addition, 28
percent view FISMA as encouraging compliance rather than risk
identification and assessment, 21 percent believe it is insufficient in
dealing with today’s cyber threat landscape, and 11 percent believe it is
an antiquated law.

“FISMA’s compliance model is not keeping up with the evolving security
landscape or the security demands,” said Mark Weber, president of NetApp
U.S. Public Sector. “There is a shift in the industry from compliance to
continuous monitoring, and a vast number of new technologies exist to
support this change. Our Federal cyber professionals should be given the
resources, regulation, and management support to take advantage of these
technologies to help thwart cyber security attacks.”

Agencies’ current network speed and capacity limits also hinder security
efforts. More than half of cyber security professionals (55 percent) say
their agency is either overloaded or cannot keep up with the amount of data
already crossing their network. The data deluge is not ending anytime soon
– cyber security professionals expect the total amount of data their agency
must protect to grow by 47 percent by 2015. As a result of the growing
amount of data, cyber security professionals say users experience slower
network connections (35 percent), agencies experience challenges in
handling large amounts of data in real time (32 percent), and the network
and security monitoring infrastructure cannot keep up with the network
itself (18 percent).

Agencies may also be missing an opportunity to thwart attacks by not
collecting and using data on previous breaches. Seventy-six percent of
cyber security professionals say their agency records all data that leaves
their agency but only 43 percent use that data to reconstruct the breach to
determine where it took place. Twenty-one percent of cyber security
professionals say their agency is unable to track where a security breach
took place.

As a result of security challenges, just 40 percent of cyber security
professionals are confident in their agency’s security. Those confident in
their agency’s security are more likely to say their agency has an adequate
budget (83 percent), their end users are compliant with cyber security
policies (80 percent), and their cyber security department can identify and
implement new cyber security technology effectively (91 percent).

To improve security, Federal cyber security professionals are looking
beyond FISMA. The majority of cyber security professionals (83 percent)
believe continuous monitoring will improve security at their agency. Most
agencies (81 percent) have a system in place to continuously monitor their
networks for cyber threats but one in four lack the capabilities and
resources to effectively execute continuous monitoring.

To make agencies more secure, cyber security professionals recommend more
focus on evaluating risk, additional budget and technology, and better
accountability regarding end user unauthorized disclosure.

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