[ISN] ODNI, DOD release IT security standardization policies

From: InfoSec News (alerts@private)
Date: Wed Mar 28 2007 - 00:01:56 PST


http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/43373-1.html

By Jason Miller
03/27/07

The Office of the National Director of National Intelligence (ONDI) and 
the Defense Department today released the seven areas of certification 
and accreditation for information technology systems that they will 
standardize.

The next step is a group of small implementation teams that will begin 
developing the how the agencies will use these new policies, said Dale 
Meyerrose, ODNIs chief information officer and associate director of 
national intelligence. He was speaking at the FOSE trade show last week 
in Washington. D.C.

Meyerrose announced four of the seven areas during his speech at FOSE, 
and today ODNI and DOD made public the other three areas.

DOD and ODNI will:
    
* Define a common set of trust levels so both departments share 
  information and connect systems more easily.
    
* Adopt reciprocity agreements to reduce systems development and 
  approval time.
    
* Define common security controls using the National Institute of 
  Standards and Technologys Special Publication 800-53 as a starting 
  point.
    
* Agree to common definitions and an understanding of security terms, 
  starting with the Committee on National Security Systems 4009 glossary 
  as a baseline.
    
* Implement a senior risk executive function to base an enterprise view 
  of all factors, including mission, IT, budget and security.
    
* Operate IT security within the enterprise operational environments, 
  enabling situational awareness and command and control.
    
* Institute a common process to incorporate security engineering within 
  life cycle processes.

We need to establish a community environment across security domains, 
equipped with standard enterprise services and universal data access, 
Meyerrose said in a statement.

DOD and ODNI started work on these standard areas eight months ago and 
included the Office of Management and Budget and other agencies. 
Meyerrose said the intelligence communities certification and 
accreditation policy was more than 10 years old and when the departments 
developed it, it took three years to write and four years to coordinate.

Many elements look on the surface as common sense things, Meyerrose said 
at FOSE. But they are tearing down the walls to build up partnerships.

He added that because of this process more agency partners are coming 
into the mix. Meyerrose said agencies such as the Homeland Security and 
Justice departments are participating in the governance process.

While this does not solve all issues of information sharing, we did 
raise the bar, he said. We need to get past quantity as the only measure 
of success and progress, and get to quality of information shared.


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