Information Assurance
The A&T Difference
Making the pain go away…
The federal government realized the importance of ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability of critical information and instituted IT Security regulations. That was back in the 1980s, but many agencies ignored the Computer Security Act for decades.
With the inception of GISRA (2000) and subsequently FISMA (2002), there was more “stick” than “carrot” proposed by the Federal government by tying compliance and security requirements to the funding and budgetary process. This forced the hand of all Federal agencies to implement security or risk their budgets for the year. The mandate required the following:
• Plan for security;
• Ensure that appropriate officials are assigned security responsibility;
• Periodically review the security controls in their information systems; and
• Authorize system processing prior to operations and, periodically, thereafter.
Sounded simple enough. Although most Federal agency leaders agreed that it was the “right thing to do”; they grossly underestimated the resource intense commitment that it would take to “check the box.” “Gross underestimation” would be putting it lightly.
The magnitude of the cost for Certification & Accreditation (C&A) alone was destroying any estimation of budget previously planned in out-year budgets. Then the cry of “unfunded mandate” quickly sprung to life… and fell upon Congressional deaf ears.
Most CIOs felt that all this compliance “stuff” was a paper drill instead of technical, operational and managerial improvements that provided “real security.” But even today, the agency budgets still bleed into the compliance abyss.
This is where A&T systems can really help you balance mission and “real security” with compliance. We have extremely competitive rates as a mid-tier company with Big 4 experience. A value to our customers in quality and cost.