Sean Connelly, who has been long been a prime mover on zero trust and other security policies for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), will soon be leaving Federal government service to join cloud security provider Zscaler, the company confirmed to MeriTalk. […]

MeriTalk’s mixologists are giving the artist formerly known as Cyber Smoke a new shake. As of 2024, the bi-monthly power networking event is called MeriTalk Tech Tonic. […]

The Federal government has come a long way in improving civilian agency and critical infrastructure cybersecurity over the past ten years. Central to that improvement effort is the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has the weighty mission of managing and reducing risk to U.S. cyber and physical infrastructure. […]

With its new National Cybersecurity Strategy, the Biden administration is doubling down on moving the Federal government to a zero trust security architecture, following last year’s mandate to set specific zero trust goals by the end of fiscal year 2024. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program is helping Federal agencies to make progress on mandates in President Biden’s cybersecurity executive order to install endpoint detection and response (EDR) on their networks, a senior CISA official said. […]

A senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) official provided an update this week on agency-level activity in their migration toward zero trust security architectures mandated by President Biden’s 2021 cybersecurity executive order and subsequent guidance documents issued by CISA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released cloud use case guidance for its Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 program, the agency announced on June 16. […]

As agencies strive to meet changing zero trust security requirements, an official from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said that he’s seeing an increased sense of urgency to implement those requirements to collectively move “the Federal fleet forward.” […]

As agencies accelerate efforts to move to secure cloud services and zero trust architecture in line with the requirements of the Biden administration’s executive order on cybersecurity (EO), many are challenged to close visibility gaps and blind spots in their technology environments. In a MeriTV interview, Sean Connelly, program manager for Trusted Internet Connections at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Michael Dickman, chief product officer at cloud visibility and analytics firm Gigamon, assessed those visibility gaps and what it will take to close them – ensuring that data is secure across physical, virtual, and cloud networks. […]

Identity management is one of the main pillars of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Zero Trust Maturity Model, but CISA’s program lead for the Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) program office Sean Connelly said that while identity is an important pillar, it should not be the only pillar agencies focus on. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will be rolling out a new protected Domain Name System (DNS) technology in 2022, CISA’s Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) program lead Sean Connelly said on Nov. 18. […]

Now that the Office and Management and Budget (OMB) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have released their new directives for Federal civilian agencies to move to zero trust security principles and expanded cloud adoption, what are some near-term steps that Federal IT and cybersecurity officials should think about as they get ready to put those directives into action? […]

As Federal agencies and organizations are looking to make the move to zero trust security architectures, the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) program should help guide that transformation, Sean Connelly, TIC program manager for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said May 12 at MeriTalk’s CDM Central: the Age of the Cyber Defender virtual conference. […]

The line between cybersecurity that keeps the Federal civilian government humming toward pandemic recovery – and the mayhem threatened by mounting waves of nation-state and criminal cyber assaults on government networks – in large measure passes through the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program run by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). […]

As Federal agencies look to modernize their cyber defenses and move to zero trust architecture, Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) 3.0 guidance will help push them along the path, with help from a zero trust use case that is in the pipeline, the TIC program manager said on April 29. […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released finalized versions of two Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 use cases that Federal agencies can use to advance their security postures. […]

Back in December 2019, months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a draft document of its Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 guidance. […]

The advent of new leadership in the White House and the still-unfolding impact of the Russia-backed hack of thousands of government and private-sector networks via SolarWinds Orion products are leading to a fresh consideration of options to improve Federal cybersecurity, panelists said on Feb. 9 at the Resiliency Colloquium event organized by MeriTalk, ACT-IAC, and the Partnership for Public Service. […]

The call for fresh investments in several major Federal IT areas featured in the new “Resilient, Keeping your WITS – Workforce, Innovation, Technology, Security – About You” report relies in part on survey data gathered from 300 Federal IT leaders in late 2020 as part of the project to identify how the Federal government can improve resilience as the country emerges from the coronavirus pandemic. […]

Chris DeRusha, who headed information security efforts for the Biden-Harris campaign last year, will become the Federal government’s next chief information security officer, Federal government security officials said today. […]

Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) Program Office chief Sean Connelly said Dec. 8 that his office remains on track to issue several additional use cases over the coming months for the TIC 3.0 security initiative that Federal agencies can employ to advance their security postures. […]

As the nature of the Federal government’s work environment has changed due to the coronavirus pandemic, building cyber resiliency in cloud infrastructures has been essential to maintaining mission operations, agency officials said. […]

Federal officials this week discussed how they can support new approaches like zero trust and SD-WAN in an efficient and secure way by leveraging the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract along with security requirements of the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 policy. […]

The head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA’s) TIC Program Office emphasized that the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 initiative aims to create more flexible and efficient ways for Federal agencies to improve security, and said his office is considering a wide range of additional use cases to help agencies implement the framework. […]

Across several agencies with the Department of Defense (DoD), building a zero-trust architecture to secure IT systems is becoming the strategy of choice for agency leaders as several confirmed efforts to transition over from a traditional perimeter approach today. […]

With Federal agencies increasingly turning to cloud service providers, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the same time is looking to increase visibility across government and secure networks. […]

While the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 guidance was finalized in late July, Program Manager Sean Connelly reiterated at an August 26 FedInsider webinar that the documents are only the first steps of TIC 3.0 efforts. […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released the final versions of three of the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) 3.0 guidance documents today. […]

Sean Connelly, Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) Program Manager at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), detailed at MeriTalk’s CDM Central: Tales from the Frontlines virtual event today how TIC and the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program work together to bolster Federal cybersecurity. […]

Sean Connelly, Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) program manager at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said this week his office expects to issue finalized documents sometime this spring for version 3.0 of the TIC initiative. The agency issued draft guidance documents for TIC 3.0 late last year. […]