Protecting the crown jewels of the government through infrastructure resilience and the DHS Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation programme

For the first time, the US federal government will know the state of its networks at any given time, identify and rank problems for priority resolution, and invest resources in fixing the most significant cyber security problems first. How is this being accomplished? Through the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) programme established by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Through CDM, agencies are provided a risk-based tools framework for cyber security, inclusive of sensors and an associated dashboard to detect vulnerabilities. The approach provides full visibility of the network for timely mitigation and proactive maintenance. This programme is making an impact today across over 97 per cent of the federal government. It has done so by: 1) discovering and protecting endpoints not detected by previous assessments; 2) providing solutions that prevent unauthorised access to the information ‘crown jewels’ of the government; and 3) initiating comprehensive CDM dashboards, both at the agency and federal levels, to provide critical visibility into vulnerabilities across the infrastructure. The CDM programme’s commitment to cyber security matches its commitment to innovation. This paper is premised on discussing the current state of the CDM programme, as well as its future direction.