The Pentagon is making big moves in an effort to improve cybersecurity for its industrial base, but so far the department’s biggest roadblocks early on may be the same confusion, doubt and uneven compliance from contractors that led to the vulnerabilities in the first place.
Officials from the Department of Defense and the National Institute of Standards and Technology gave updates on two nascent programs at an Aug. 8 Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board meeting: NIST’s new draft cybersecurity guidance for contractor systems deemed high value assets and the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program.
Both are designed to shore up different aspects of DOD’s cybersecurity regime for contractors, and both are causing heartburn among companies who are still unclear about how best to comply.
