A coming cybersecurity implementation plan for federal agencies will emphasize talent recruitment as the government seeks to progress on goals from its 30-day cyber sprint, the U.S.’ chief information officer told the Potomac Officers Club Thursday.
Federal CIO Tony Scott said the plan to put in place new measures for cyber hygiene at agencies is going through a review and should go public within the next “few weeks.”
Agencies are facing a problem in their respective workforces with dated technology and people that designed those systems no longer in the workforce or ready to retire, Scott said.
“We need to reinvest in our federal workforce to keep talent and abilities to update technology and rethink what a digital government looks like, ” he said.
“Citizen-facing functions can mirror how the rest of the world uses a mobile engagement model that responds to their demands.”
Scott was the third keynote speaker for the POC’s Fall 2015 Cybersecurity Summit, a half-day event for government and contracting executives to discuss the current cyber environment in both the public and private sectors and ways to collaborate in the network security arena.
The former VMware (NYSE: VMW) CIO, who became U.S. CIO in February, also advocated for what he called a “security-by-design” approach that builds defense and healing methods into technology systems before they are deployed.
“We have to move in short order and look at how to regularly replace and update everything, ” he said.
“We’ll be asking CIOs to evaluate security elements of program in the design and look at resilience.”
