Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson hosts President Obama at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, Jan. 13, 2015. DHS photo by Barry Bahler
White House Slates $19B for Cyber Defense. Next Step: Find Contractors to Help
The Cybersecurity National Action Plan seeks a 35% increase over last year's proposed budget.
A federal effort to clean up cyber practices may soon spur a boom in business for tech vendors.
The Cybersecurity National Action Plan, released months after a large-scale hack exposed millions of individuals' government background checks, proposes $19 billion in cyber investments as part of the President's 2017 fiscal year budget.
To make sure vendors are aware of plumped-up cyber budgets—a 35 percent increase over the previous year's proposed budget—the General Services Administration is hosting an "industry day" during which GSA and Homeland Security officials will discuss the CNAP's requirements, risk assessments and information about how agencies can buy from contracting vehicles.
The industry day, scheduled for June 13, focuses specifically on "highly adaptive" cybersecurity services, according to a FedBizOpps.gov posting.
The cyber plan also proposes a $3.1-billion revolving Information Technology Modernization Fund that agencies could use to fund updates to their internal systems and the appointment of the first federal chief information security officer.
Aside from formal contracts with the federal government, the plan also outlines a few ways in which tech giants can contribute to overall national cybersecurity. For instance, the nonprofit National Cyber Security Alliance is partnering with companies including Google, Facebook, DropBox, and Microsoft to improve protections on online accounts, the plan said.
Another federal effort pushes government agencies to use better identity-proofing and multi-factor authentication, and reducing the government's use of of Social Security numbers as a way to verify that citizens are who they say they are, the plan says.