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The Department of Defense has been consolidating it’s IT resources for some years now.  It has been a slow, painful contraction to consolidate computing resources.  But, it is a necessary step.  Gone are the wild west days of lots of organizations building their own local “county options” and throwing them on to the network.  I [...]

The federal government has responded to voter cries for less cost by swinging the contracting pendulum to predominately compete federal contracts using low price, technically acceptable (LPTA) evaluation criteria for bids. This is designed to drive down the cost of federal spending for low risk services and other low risk procurements. Prior to this pendulum [...]

I had a request to talk more about federal contracting 101. First, it’s not for the timid. Second, it takes a lot of work. Third, it’s a pain in the butt. Fourth, if you want to spend more time doing paperwork than actual work, go for it! That’s federal contracting in a nutshell. The reality [...]

I have spent the past two weeks preparing to take the CompTia Security+ exam for work.  CompTia Security+ is one of the certifications required by the DoD under DoDI 8570.01 for certain IT professionals.  In this case, Security+ is required if you are doing to be working in an Information Assurance (IA) role.  It was [...]

I am pleased to report that there may be hope coming to Federal agencies regarding FISMA compliance according to this NextGov article.  For those of you that have not had the pleasure of complying with FISMA and the Defense Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP), count yourselves lucky.  Initial FISMA compliance is a complete [...]

The Application Security and Development Checklist, version 2, release 1.5, is published and maintained by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) for the U.S. Department of Defense. Within the checklist, it requires that password complexity meet the following requirements: A minimum of 15 characters Include at least one uppercase alphabetic character Include at least one [...]