CISA: No organization in the public or private sector could’ve prevented SolarWinds breach

By Editor On Jun 24, 2021

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Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) Says the House of Representatives will join the president’s proposed raise for federal employees next year. She said the House of Representatives bill for the Financial Services Bill and State as a whole in 2022 would support a 2.7% increase. The House Budgets Committee is expected to release the text for this bill today. The Funding Subcommittee will review the legislation later this week. Wexton said she would prefer a larger raise for federal employees. She is co-sponsoring a bill that would give employees a three point two percent pay rise next year. (Federal Intelligence Network)

For the first time in over a year, the Office for Personnel Management has a permanent director. The Senate confirmed Kiran Ahuja as OPM director in a narrow vote. Vice President Kamala Harris voted to break a 50:50 tie. No Senate Republican voted for Ahuja because of concerns about her views on abortion and her support for an anti-racist scholar. She will be the first South Asian and first Asian American woman to lead OPM. Five different people led the agency in the previous administration. (Federal Intelligence Network)

Unproductive federal programs would end up in the can under a new bipartisan bill. Sens. Maggie Hassan (DN.H.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) Introduced the law whereby the agencies will present a list of wasteful programs to the Office of Management and Budget. OMB will work with Congress to decide whether the programs should survive. The bill aims to eradicate ineffective government spending. Supporters claim it will save taxpayers $ 3.1 billion over the next decade. (Senator Maggie Hassan)

Republican Senators are introducing bill to prohibit IRS employees from leaving their jobs to use official time during tax filing season. Senator Mike Braun (R-Ind.) Leads six additional Senators in the implementation of the IRS Customer Service Improvement Act. Braun said the bill’s restrictions on time use would ease the agency’s workload as a quarter of IRS employees who took official time in 2019 are in customer service or call centers. The National Taxpayer Advocate notes that the IRS received 100 million calls last year but only answered 24 million. (Senator Mike Braun)

A handful of Defense Department candidates are one step closer to confirmation. The Senate Armed Services Committee brought up the nominations of Gina Ortiz Jones as Air Force Secondary Civil Officer and Shawn Skelly as Assistant Secretary of Defense for standby. Further advances are Caroline Krass as General Counsel of the Ministry of Defense and Meredith Berger as Deputy Naval Minister for Energy, Installations and the Environment.

The National Guard will need $ 500 million to maintain training over the summer. The past year has been one of the busiest in history for the National Guard as it responded to COVID, natural disasters and civil unrest. The five months she spent protecting the Capitol following an attack by a pro-Trump mob can cost the military component some time in training. Army officials say if Congress can’t pass additional law soon, the Guard will be forced to cancel many planned exercises for this summer. This could potentially jeopardize aviation and ground support readiness. (Federal Intelligence Network)

Military service leaders are opposing a popular bill that would remove non-military crimes from the chain of command. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley said removing commanders from law enforcement decisions could undermine the readiness and loyalty between commanders and those who lead them. The chiefs of service were largely open to the prosecution of sexual assaults outside the chain of command. The bill amending the military law has more than 60 co-sponsors in the Senate. (Federal Intelligence Network)

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke out in favor of revising the military’s system of prosecuting sexual assault cases. In a statement yesterday evening, Austin said the DoD would work with Congress to remove these charges from the military chain of command. His decision follows the recommendations of an independent audit committee that Austin set up at the beginning of his tenure. This panel recommended a new law enforcement system for a wide variety of crimes, including domestic violence. Austin’s decision comes shortly after several senior uniformed leaders wrote to Congress that they had serious concerns about removing law enforcement from the chain of command.

The accreditation body for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Accreditation has just authorized Redspin and Kratos as the first certified external assessment organizations (C3PAOs). Matthew Travis, CEO of CMMC AB, said the C3PAOs could be cleared for reviews as early as mid-July. But first they need the Department of Defense and the AB to finalize the assessment guidelines and set up an IT system to track the CMMC results. Travis also said all schedules will depend on the outcome of a CMMC review by new Biden government officials. This review is expected to be completed shortly.

When it came to the SolarWinds cyber attack, the private sector was in no better shape than the government to stop or block the attack. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) That it was not aware of any public or private sector organization that had successfully deployed technology that detected deviations from normal network behavior that would have been detected and / or prevented the SolarWinds incident. CISA said it also doesn’t know how many agencies have segmented their networks to prevent hackers from hopping networks once they break cyber defenses.

The Department of Homeland Security is embarking on a year-long journey to establish new cybersecurity measures within the agency. A zero trust action group will work in three to four month sprints, initially starting with conditional access and rights management, to build a zero trust architecture. CIO Eric Hysen said this work should be viewed as a marathon, not a sprint. The effort is part of the Biden Administration Enhancing Cybersecurity Enforcement Order, which invested $ 1 billion in DHS.

An industry association said it was time to reconsider government-wide acquisition deals. The basic theories underlying the Government Acquisition Agreements (GWACs) have not been reformed in more than 25 years. The industry association Alliance for Digital Innovation wants to change that. In a new whitepaper, ADI makes seven recommendations that range from more entry opportunities for new providers to greater use of the previous performance of the private sector. ADI said the recommendations are a combination of some of the innovations that are happening in the government today and some of the weaknesses contractors at GWACs are facing.

The Government Accountability Office said the social security administration should reconsider the performance expectations of their administrative judges. The SSA wants administrative judges to issue between 500 and 700 decisions or dismissals per year. But 87% of ALJs told GAO that expectations were too high. Over 80% of the judges achieved the SSA’s goal in 2019. But 18% achieved goals during the pandemic last year. According to judges, limitations on teleworking and the size of case files are the main reasons why it does not achieve the SSA’s goals. The case files are five times larger today than when the SSA first set performance goals in 2007.

After nearly 15 months of virtual disputes, the Federal Circuit plans to allow face-to-face disputes again from the end of August. Law 360 reports that it will initially test new COVID-19 protocols with two cases next month. US Chief Circuit Judge Kimberly A. Moore issued an order Tuesday instructing the clerk to “resume planning personal arguments from the September 2021 session,” but left room for cases until then “as announced proceed “.

Attorneys-general from 20 states and the District of Columbia are questioning the Postal Service’s plan to slow down first-class mail. State attorneys general tell the Post Regulatory Commission that USPS plans to slow the delivery of nearly 40% of first-class mail, which would affect the on-time delivery of election mail. Many of the states joined lawsuits last year contesting USPS operational changes ahead of the 2020 election. The states said the changes would hit rural and low-income residents in particular with few alternatives to USPS delivery. Attorneys representing New York City and San Francisco joined the states to file their comments. (Federal Intelligence Network)

The Department of the Interior studies the turbulent history of state boarding schools for Native Americans. Secretary of State Deborah Haaland said the newly launched Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative will publish any information it can gather about the treatment of Indians in schools, which were first established in 1819. They were disbanded in the 1960s. The school network was developed to uproot and culturally assimilate Indian children. In an open letter, Haaland said the policy contradicts the doctrine of the federal government’s responsibility to trust Indians. She added that the harsh treatment of Indian children still reverberates. Haaland said the recent discovery of unmarked graves on a school site in Canada prompted the newer settlement.

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