Rapidity of incident response and personnel training are high on the priority list at the Defense Department’s U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) as it grapples with implementing cybersecurity strategies, a TRANSCOM official said on May 12.
Chris Crist, Chief of Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) at TRANSCOM, talked about those priorities during a panel discussion hosted by ATARC and entitled, One Year In: The Executive Order and Securing Software Supply Chains.
“The biggest issue that keeps us up at night is being able to quickly secure threats when they are found, as well as being able to quickly educate and train new personal as technology rapidly changes,” he said.
The idea of speed also transcends into how many government agencies implement different applications into their network systems, as well how they are able to patch them up when a vulnerability is found.
“Stuff moves so fast and so you need move towards a modern way of developing software applications – you have a challenge, it’s really difficult to be agile and to change quickly when you’re working with a legacy application that haven’t been looked at in three years’” he said.
Crist also emphasized the need for rapid action in many different aspects of government work including how agencies integrate policy changes, or strategies across government platforms. On the cyber front, the pace of change has only picked up since the Biden administration issued its cybersecurity executive order one year ago.
