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Month: December 2018

Clearance! Get Your Clearance Here!

An Executive Order (EO) proposed in June will transfer the governmentwide security clearance program from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) to the Pentagon.

DoD is preparing to restructure and reorganize personnel and resources to take over the security clearance program. Their effort has been ongoing since Congress authorized the department to take responsibility for defense-only background investigations in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.

DoD plans to merge the NBIB workforce with the Defense Security Service, along with several defense entities, to form a new security clearance organization. Although only Congress can create a new agency, DoD has the latitude to restructure existing functions.

The new agency, likely to be called the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) will have upwards of 10,000 employees. The employees will include both federal and contracted investigators. Employees will come from NBIB and the Defense Security Service’s current workforce of approximately 900 employees. DCSA will have two additional “clearing arms”: a Critical Technology Protection Center and a Counterintelligence and Analysis Center. Ultimately DCSA will serve as the governmentwide security clearance provider.

The goal is to decrease waits for clearances, which is currently absurdly long. People graduating from college and offered a government job, pending a clearance, often are lost to other companies due to long waits for their clearances. The government wants a less expensive workforce and newer technologies,  but cannot get it until they have the cleared personnel.

If you have clearance questions, give us a call at 301-913-5000.

 

One and Done! – Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services (HACS) update to Schedule 70

The field of cybersecurity has grown substantially since the initial launching of the four HACS in 2016. This growth has led GSA to restructure the original HACS SINS 132-45 (A-D) into a single HACS SIN, 132-45, with subcategories of cybersecurity services.

Federal agencies use large complex network and data systems to maintain and manage many forms of data and information, including High Value Assets that hold sensitive information critical to national and economic security. As a result, the proposed restructure will include the following full set of HACS SIN services:

• High-Value Asset Assessments

• Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA)

• Incident Response

• Penetration Testing

• Cyber Hunt

The four current HACS SINs will be deleted from the solicitation and added as subcategories under the new HACS SIN 132-45.

Please feel free to give us a call at 301-913-5000 if you’d like to discuss your cybersecurity solutions for GSA Schedule 70.