DHS Will Soon Launch CDM Service for Smaller Agencies

Smaller agencies will soon get on the same footing as their larger brethren when it comes to cybersecurity support. The Department of Homeland Security will soon receive approval to extend its Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program as a shared service to smaller, non-CFO Act agencies, according to a key DHS office. 

Kevin Cox, program manager for CDM at DHS, said on March 27 that officials were awaiting authorization for the platform, FeddScoop reports. 

“The shared service platform is working to support the smaller agencies to get the sensors out to their environment, but then be able to report back to a multitenant agency dashboard that then feeds up to the federal dashboard,” Cox said at the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council’s Acquisition Excellence conference.

DHS is also working on several other initiatives within the CDM program, Cox said. Those include establishing data exchanges for network cybersecurity dashboards at cabinet-level agencies, which will feed information to the larger federal dashboard that provides better insight into real-time cybersecurity threats across the executive branch. 

Cox said last fall that DHS would launch a shared service that would serve as a multitenant dashboard for smaller agencies. That shared-service platform could be a model for other CDM shared services for larger agencies, Cox said at the time.

Over the next two months, more agencies will feed their dashboards into the federal dashboard, Cox indicated.  

“Right now, we have about a quarter of the big cabinet-level agencies assets reporting to the federal dashboard,” he said, according to FedScioop. “Within the IT modernization report, we have until the end of May to get that full visibility of all of the cabinet-level agencies and the smaller agencies that are participating in the program.”