Security News > 2011 > April > USAID waives FISMA for iPads

http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/usaid-waives-fisma-ipads/2011-04-13 By Molly Bernhart Walker FierceGovernmentIT April 13, 2011 Many U.S. Agency for International Development workers are using iPads--a fact that recently drew the ire of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she sat next to a USAID official on a plane, said Jerry Horton, chief information officer at USAID. Horton spoke April 7 at a cloud computing forum at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md. Clinton wanted to know why a USAID official could have an iPad while State Department officials still can't. The secret, apparently, lies in the extensive use of waivers. It's "hard to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts," Horton said, admitting that not all USAID networked devices are formally certified and accredited under Federal Information Security Management Act. "We are not DHS. We are not DoD," he said. While the State Department requires high-risk cybersecurity, USAID's requirements are much lower, said Horton. "And for what is high-security it better be on SIPR." Horton also said his agency doesn't feel bound to "CONUS support," referring to the data sovereignty issues some agencies face. If USAID workers are in Afghanistan, it makes much more sense for them to use mobile devices that touch servers in Doha rather than servers in the United States, he explained. [...] ___________________________________________________________ Tegatai Managed Colocation: Four Provider Blended Tier-1 Bandwidth, Fortinet Universal Threat Management, Natural Disaster Avoidance, Always-On Power Delivery Network, Cisco Switches, SAS 70 Type II Datacenter. Find peace of mind, Defend your Critical Infrastructure. http://www.tegataiphoenix.com/

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http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/usaid-waives-fisma-ipads/2011-04-13