Strengthening the U.S. Government Supply Chain: Cybersecurity under Executive Order 14028
Image Credit: Michael Jowen from Unsplash.
U.S. government agencies have a reputation for occasionally clinging on to outdated technology. Some illustrative examples include the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) paying Microsoft $9 million to continue supporting the defunct Windows XP in 2015 and a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from 2019 documenting multiple agencies using legacy systems with 8 to 50-year-old components. In its findings, the GAO unsurprisingly concluded that such legacy systems using outdated or unsupported software languages and hardware poses a cybersecurity risk.
In the wake of the SolarWinds, Microsoft Exchange, and Colonial Pipeline security incidents that impacted U.S. government agencies and/or U.S. critical infrastructure, President Biden issued Executive Order 14028 to update minimum cybersecurity standards for all software sold to the federal government and throughout the supply chain.
Existing Requirements under FedRAMP, DFARS, and CMMC
The new obligations arising out of Executive Order 14028 add to existing security regulations for certain government contractors and subcontractors.
The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) oversees the safe provisioning of cloud products and services from a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to any government agency. As part of the FedRAMP authorization process, an accredited Third-Party Assessment Organization (3PAO) assesses the CSP’s controls under NIST SP 800-53, a security framework for federal government information systems. The 3PAO also assesses additional controls above the NIST baseline that are unique to cloud computing.
Contractors who supply products or services specifically to the DoD are subject to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS). The DFARS standards establish compliance with fourteen groups of cybersecurity requirements under NIST SP 800-171, meant to protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).
In November 2020, the DoD released the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) framework, which builds upon DFARS. Contractors undergo an audit by a CMMC Third Party Assessment Organization (C3PAO), which issues a certification for the contractors’ assessed cybersecurity maturity level. The certification ranges from CMMC Level 1, indicating a low, ad-hoc maturity, to CMMC Level 5, indicating a high, optimized maturity. As contractors progress further up the DoD supply chain all the way to prime contractors—those working directly with the DoD—the DoD scale requirements for those contractors to meet higher certification levels. Meeting all DFARS controls and 110 controls in NIST SP 800-171 roughly correlates to CMMC level 3.