In this SEI Podcast, Rachel Dzombak and Jay Palat discuss growth in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and how organizations can hire and train staff to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by AI and machine learning—and the critical need for an AI engineering discipline to grow the AI workforce.
DevSecOps is a set of principles and practices that provide faster delivery of secure software capabilities by improving the collaboration and communication between software development teams, IT operations, and security staff within an organization, as well as with acquirers, suppliers, and other stakeholders in the life of a software system. In this SEI podcast, Hasan Yasar, technical director of the Continuous Deployment of Capability group in the Software Solutions Division of the SEI, discu...
In this SEI Podcast, Keith Korzec discusses the Mission-Based Prioritization method for prioritizing Agile backlogs. This method overcomes the shortcomings of prioritization based on “weighted shortest job first” and utilizes objective, mission-focused criteria while allowing ongoing re-prioritization to be conducted with minimal overhead.
Digital engineering is an integrated digital approach that uses authoritative sources of systems data and models as a continuum across disciplines to support lifecycle activities from concept through disposal. With digital engineering, models are developed for everything, not just for software, but for all components of a system of systems, hardware and software. The models and associated data are stored in a singular repository of knowledge and are the single source that is used by all contract...
Brett Tucker, a technical manager for cyber risk in the SEI CERT Division, discusses the Operationally Critical Threat, Asset, and Vulnerability Evaluation for the Enterprise (OCTAVE FORTE) Model, which helps organizations evaluate security risks and use principles of enterprise risk management to bridge the gap between executives and practitioners. In this SEI Podcast, Tucker outlines OCTAVE FORTE's 10-step framework to guide organizations in managing risk.
If organizations take more steps to address security-related activities now, they will be less likely to encounter security incidents in the future. When it comes to application containers, security is achieved through adopting a series of best practices and guidelines. In this SEI Podcast, Tom Scanlon and Richard Laughlin, researchers with the SEI's CERT Division, discuss seven steps that developers can take to engineer security into ongoing and future container adoption efforts.
In this SEI Podcast, Marisa Midler and Tim Shimeall, network defense analysts within the SEI's CERT Division, discuss the growing problem of ransomware including the rise of ransomware as a service threats. Ransom payments from Quarter 3 of 2019 were on average $42,000, and in Quarter 1 of 2020, that average increased $70,000 to $112,000. The volume of attacks also increased by 25 percent in Quarter 4 of 2019 and by another 25 percent in Quarter 1 of 2020. The sophistication of the attacks has i...
Software vulnerability coordination at the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) has traditionally relied on a hub-and-spoke model, with reports submitted to analysts at the CERT/CC analysts who would then work with contact affected vendors. To scale communications and increase the level of collaboration between vulnerability reporters, coordinators, and software vendors, the CERT/CC team has created a web-based platform for software vulnerability reporting and coordination called the Vulnerability...
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced significant changes in enterprise work practices, including an increased use of telecommunications technologies required by the new work-from-home policies that most organizations have instituted in response. In this podcast, Phil Groce, a senior network defense analyst in the CERT Division of the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, discusses the security implications of this dramatic increase in the number of people in organizations who ar...
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 1.0 for Defense Industrial Base (DIB) suppliers defines specific cybersecurity practices across five levels of maturity while also measuring the degree to which those practices are institutionalized within an organization. The CMMC model draws on maturity processes and cybersecurity best practices from multiple standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) frameworks and references, as well as input from DIB e...
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 1.0 for Defense Industrial Base (DIB) suppliers defines specific cybersecurity practices across five levels of maturity while also measuring the degree to which those practices are institutionalized within an organization. The CMMC model draws on maturity processes and cybersecurity best practices from multiple standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) frameworks and references, as well as input from DIB e...
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 1.0 for Defense Industrial Base (DIB) suppliers defines specific cybersecurity practices across five levels of maturity while also measuring the degree to which those practices are institutionalized within an organization. The CMMC model draws on maturity processes and cybersecurity best practices from multiple standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) frameworks and references, as well as input from DIB e...
Authority to Operate (ATO) is a process that certifies a system to operate for a certain period of time by evaluating the risk of the system's security controls. ATO is based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Risk Management Framework (NIST 800-37). In this podcast, Shane Ficorilli and Hasan Yasar, both with the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, discuss continuous ATO, including challenges, the role of DevSecOps, and cultural issues that organizatio...
A pervasive belief in software engineering is that some programmers are much, much better than others (the times-10, or 10x, programmer), and that the skills, abilities, and talents of these programmers exert an outsized influence on that organizations’ success or failure. Bill Nichols, a researcher with the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, recently examined the veracity and relevance of this widely held notion. Using data from a study conducted at the SEI, Nichols foun...
Many organizations use the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) to prioritize actions during vulnerability management. This podcast—which highlights the latest work in prioritizing actions during vulnerability management—presents a testable Stakeholder-Specific Vulnerability Categorization (SSVC) that avoids some problems with CVSS. SSVC takes the form of decision trees for different vulnerability management communities. During this podcast, CERT vulnerability researchers Eric Hatleback, A...
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 1.0 for Defense Industrial Base (DIB) suppliers defines specific cybersecurity practices across five levels of maturity while also measuring the degree to which those practices are institutionalized within an organization. The CMMC model draws on maturity processes and cybersecurity best practices from multiple standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) frameworks and references, as well as input from DIB e...
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 1.0 for Defense Industrial Base (DIB) suppliers defines specific cybersecurity practices across five levels of maturity while also measuring the degree to which those practices are institutionalized within an organization. The CMMC model draws on maturity processes and cybersecurity best practices from multiple standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) frameworks and references, as well as input from DIB e...
Situational awareness makes it possible to get relevant information from across an organization, to integrate that information, and to disseminate it to help leaders make more informed decisions. In this SEI Podcast, Angela Horneman and Timothy Morrow, researchers in the SEI's CERT Division, discuss the importance of looking beyond the network to acquire situational awareness for cybersecurity.
While actual quantum computers are available from several different companies, we are currently in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era. Working in the NISQ era presents a number of challenges, and the SEI is working to use NISQ devices not only to solve specific mission applications for the Department of Defense, but also to help determine when they will demonstrate so-called quantum advantage: a quantum computer solving a problem of practical interest faster than a classical compute...
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 1.0 for Defense Industrial Base (DIB) suppliers defines specific cybersecurity practices across five levels of maturity while also measuring the degree to which those practices are institutionalized within an organization. The CMMC model draws on maturity processes and cybersecurity best practices from multiple standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) frameworks and references, as well as input from DIB e...
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 1.0 for the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) defines specific cybersecurity practices across five levels of maturity while also measuring the degree to which those practices are institutionalized within an organization. The CMMC model draws on maturity processes and cybersecurity best practices from multiple standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) frameworks and references, as well as input from DIB entitie...
The culture of computers and information technology changes quickly. The Future of Cyber Podcast series explores the future of cyber and whether we can use the innovations of the past to address the problems of the future. In our latest episode, Bobbie Stempfley, director of the SEI’s CERT Division, interviews Dr. Diana Burley, executive director and chair of the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection, or I3P, and vice provost for research at American University. Their discussion fo...
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 1.0 for the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) defines specific cybersecurity practices across five levels of maturity while also measuring the degree to which those practices are institutionalized within an organization. The CMMC model draws on maturity processes and cybersecurity best practices from multiple standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) frameworks and references, as well as input from DIB entitie...
Software development is shifting to incremental delivery to meet the demand for software quicker and at lower costs. With the current cyber threat climate, the demand for cybersecurity is growing but existing compliance processes focus on a completed product and do not support incremental delivery. Cybersecurity must be carefully woven into each increment deliver results with sufficient security and quality. Previous SEI research has shown that improved quality results in improved cybersecurity....
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 1.0 defines specific cybersecurity practices across five levels of maturity while also measuring the degree to which those practices are institutionalized within an organization. The CMMC model draws on maturity processes and cybersecurity best practices from multiple standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) frameworks and references, as well as input from Defense Industrial Base (DIB) entities and the De...
For more than 30 years, the cybersecurity community has worked to increase the effectiveness of our cybersecurity and resilience efforts. Today we face an explosion of devices, the pervasiveness of software, the threat of adversarial capability, and the dependence of national capabilities on the cyber domain. These challenges demand that we think about how to achieve the future we need, which is the subject of a new series of podcasts, The Future of Cyber. In this episode, Bobbie Stempfley, dire...
In this SEI podcast, Hasan Yasar and Jose Morales discuss challenges to implementing DevOps in highly regulated environments (HREs), exploring issues such as environment parity, the approval process, and compliance. This podcast is the second to explore DevOps in HREs.
The culture of computers and information technology evolves quickly. In this environment, how can we build a culture of security through regulations and best practices when technology can move so much faster than legislative bodies? The Future of Cyber Podcast Series explores whether we can use the innovations of the past to address the problems of the future. In this SEI Podcast, David Hickton, founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security, sits...
Artificially intelligent (AI) systems hold great promise to empower us with knowledge and enhance human effectiveness. As a senior research scientist in human-machine interaction at the Software Engineering Institute's Emerging Technology Center, Carol Smith works to further understand how humans and machines can better collaborate to solve important problems and also understand our responsibilities and how that work continues once AI systems are operational. In this podcast, Smith discusses a f...
In this podcast, Allen Householder and David Warren discuss the CERT Guide to Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure , which is intended for use by security researchers, software vendors, and other stakeholders in navigating the complexities of informing others about security vulnerabilities.
