By Lon J. Berman CISSP, RDRP Thanks to the work of the Joint Task Force, RMF is now the official information security life cycle process across all three “segments” of the Executive Branch, i.e., DoD, federal civil agencies, and the intelligence community. It’s now been 4 ½ years since DoD officially “adopted” RMF (DoDI 8510.01,…
By Kathryn Daily, CISSP, RDRP If you heard a whooshing sound on New Years Eve, that was probably the deadline for compliance with NIST 171 flying by. A lot of you might be asking “What is NIST 171?” NIST 171 is a set of requirements documented in the NIST Special Publication 800-171 (Protecting Controlled Unclassified…
Attention information assurance and cyber security professionals in Hampton Roads! IT Dojo is running an RMF for DoD IT training course in the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area July 11 – 14. Seating is limited, but this course is guaranteed to run! We have delivered this course to hundreds of individuals throughout the country and the response…
By Lon J. Berman, CISSP BAI Information Security I recently had the pleasure of consulting for a DoD program that successfully navigated the RMF process and received a full three year Authorization to Operate (ATO). In lieu of … or in addition to … a victory party, the team decided it would be productive to…
By Lon J. Berman, CISSP at BAI Information Security Let’s take a look at some strategies for reviewing the Security Control Baseline and creating “action plans” for implementation. The “Raw Materials” An effective review starts with the right materials. You’ll need two spreadsheets to work with: Security Controls Assessment Procedures (CCIs) Using the Security Controls…
Picture this. You’ve just completed your RMF training with IT Dojo. You spent four days in class learning and doing. So much information and guidance has come your way that at times you felt like you were drinking from a fire hose! Now, at last, you’re sitting in the relative peace and quiet of your…
By Kathryn M. Farrish, CISSP BAI Information Security Security Control Inheritance is one of the most powerful tools available to facilitate the RMF process. Unfortunately, it is not always very well understood, and, as a result, is often misapplied. CNSSI 4009 defines Security Control Inheritance as “a situation in which an information system or application…
I recently had a client who had a Security+ certification that was about to expire and he asked me a question that I wanted to share with our readers. If my Security+ certification is about to expire, can I just sit in another Security+ course and earn the CEUs that I need in order to…
By Kathryn M. Farrish, CISSP at BAI Inc. One of the primary goals of the RMF life cycle is for a system to achieve and maintain compliance with a baseline of Security Controls in accordance with NIST SP 800-53 and CNSSI 1253. Security controls provide specific safeguards in numerous subject areas (aka. “families”), including access…
Article By Lon J. Berman, CISSP In the last issue of RMF Today and Tomorrow, we walked through the System Categorization process step-bystep. Now that we’ve categorized our system, let’s take a look at the steps for creating a Security Control Baseline. Step 1: Create Initial Control Set Your System Categorization defines the initial set of…