“IA Fusion”: Cut costs / improve quality / compete better

Click here to download “IA Fusion for a DoD Contractor” now!

This is a 2011 paper presented to FITSI.org and addresses an ambitious topic for me to cover: “IA Fusion”. My approach explores how DoD and Federal Government contractors can cut costs while simultaneously improving overall quality and minimizing the chance for a “stop work” order from the Government customer.

Cybersecurity measures to address ongoing attack vectors come at greater and greater expense (budgeted at $3.2 billion back in fiscal 2010), even as DoD and the federal government are being pushed hard to cut costs. OMB’s call to “turnaround or terminate at least one-third of poorly performing projects” speaks tellingly to the cost and expense involved in cybersecurity certifications: a contractor must deliver secured systems expeditiously or risk being tagged as a “poor performer.”

This paper provides a roadmap called “IA Fusion” for a DoD contractor seeking to cut costs even while improving IA. As Professor John Savage of Brown University testified to Congress, “it is better to build in security rather than try to add it after the fact” and “hardware and software vendors and network providers should be required to conform to reasonable cyber security guidelines.” Decisions by individual contributors are the linchpin of IA; IA Fusion helps an organization to translate IA policies into IA practices at the ground level.

IA Fusion gives an organization the competitive edge necessary to survive and thrive in today’s demanding DoD business environment by integrating IA throughout the software development process. Moreover, IA Fusion’s holistic management, education, and measurement approaches can be extended to projects across the organization – even those projects not directly related to the DoD.