Cybersecurity for the Federal Government

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Reducing operational risk across the federal enterprise

The federal government’s core missions are at risk: Adversaries are targeting the data, networks, and devices that Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies rely on to sustain operations. As civil agencies grow more dependent on technology and more focused on leveraging data to deliver better outcomes for the American public, the attack surface of the federal enterprise is expanding in the eyes of determined cyber adversaries.

Advanced persistent threat (APT) actors are developing sophisticated cyber capabilities to disrupt national critical functions: To that end, they see an attack surface that extends across IT, operational technology (OT), the cloud, connected devices, 5G networks, supply chains, and beyond. Imagine a foreign power secretly prepositioning disruptive malware in agency networks to deter the United States from acting in a future geopolitical crisis. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) leaders and FCEB chief information officers (CIO) and chief information security officers (CISO) are working to get ahead of such threats.

Overcoming Challenges

Strengthening federal cybersecurity and reducing operational risk will require overcoming complex challenges:

Threat hunters protecting FCEB networks lack sufficient visibility across all environments. 

Rapidly evolving threats are outpacing cybersecurity upgrades—and adversarial investments in AI and quantum computing pose emerging risks.

The federal enterprise was never designed to be defended as one entity.

The decentralized nature of some agency networks impedes cyber defense, governance, and the standardization of tools and services. 

Many agencies have outdated systems with weak security controls and unpatched software. 

Federal technology investments often don't reflect operational priorities for cyber defense.

Driving Cybersecurity Improvements

To help build security and resilience at scale, the government is expanding visibility across the federal enterprise, boosting the use of standardized tools and shared services, improving the sharing of threat information, putting zero trust into practice to protect sensitive data in real time, and moving to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). One of the most important drivers of federal cybersecurity improvements will be CISA’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program, which is evolving to enable interactive cyber defense.

Building Security and Resilience

Booz Allen is ready to help civil agencies address all these challenges.

  • We're immersed in the mission: We bring experience from working across nearly every federal, defense, and intelligence agency, to include supporting the CDM program. We also defend Fortune 500 companies from advanced cyber threats. The breadth of our insight and expertise provides a unique perspective to inform confident cyber risk management decisions. And with stronger security and resilience, agencies are better positioned to meet strategic objectives.
  • We help agencies outpace the adversary: We track adversarial techniques, technologies, and tactics to help agencies stay ahead of threats, harden critical systems, and defend what matters most. We help security teams automate and accelerate insights and operations via data-driven cybersecurity—and we help them plan and execute the journey to a zero trust architecture (ZTA).
  • We develop superior mission solutions: We execute rapid prototyping to quickly develop technical solutions to meet urgent needs. And we help agencies understand and prioritize risks and vulnerabilities beyond the traditional IT environment.
  • We deploy full-spectrum capabilities: We leverage and integrate defensive and offensive cyber capabilities—and we apply related insights to cyber defense with an adversarial mindset, proactive threat hunting, and intelligence-grade tradecraft.

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