Acquisition Issues in Cybersecurity: Adapting to Management Challenges

Acquisition Issues in Cybersecurity: Adapting to Management Challenges

Quinn Lanzendorfer
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 9
DOI: 10.4018/IJCRE.2021010104
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Abstract

Government cybersecurity organizations have faced unique challenges in the last decade. With the release of Executive Order 13636 in 2013, an otherwise amorphous domain of warfare matured quickly and began to take shape in the areas of information sharing, industry relations, and various areas of management. This study seeks to fill a gap that currently exists in scholarly research in the areas of acquisition and program management in cybersecurity. Using the innovative e-Delphi electronic method to collect qualitative and quantitative data from experts, this study explores the contractual complexity, intellectual property, and risk management aspects of the U.S. Government and industry relationship in cybersecurity organizations.
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Research Questions

  • RQ1: Do USG cybersecurity organizations and their industry partners use risk management methodologies effectively?

  • RQ2: Do U.S. industry partners that provide cybersecurity products and services to the USG have more challenges with intellectual property from partnering and information sharing when compared to other types of products and services procured by the USG?

  • RQ3: Are contractual relationships between USG cybersecurity organizations and industry for products and services more complicated than other USG and industry contractual relationships?

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Literature Review

Risk Management

In the past, the practice of risk management in cybersecurity has been either ignored or completely left up to each corporation or Government agency to make their own policies and practices. President Obama issued Executive Order (E.O.) 13636 Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity in 2013 to create the first applicable cybersecurity legislation in the U.S. and establish a foundation for policy creation (Mustard, 2014).

Executive Order 13636 also directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create a framework for risk management that USG cybersecurity organizations will follow. The NIST cybersecurity Risk Management Framework (RMF) borrows many of the characteristics of software-intensive production and completes the gap between quality management and operations that are done at the executive and business process levels. It also links strategic planning, quality management, and the ISO 31000 standardization for risk management (Radziwill and Benton, 2017). According to Davis (2018):

The RMF provides a standardized process and a common control set with which cybersecurity and risk management activities can be integrated into system developmental life cycles across all federal agencies. This requires system and program managers to consider “baked-in” security in the development phase of the system life cycle. (p. 11)

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