The coronavirus forced agencies to involve chief information security officers more directly in technology adoption, Adam Grandt-Nesher, director of the General Services Administration’s Infrastructure Optimization Center of Excellence, explained during an ATARC webinar.
Agencies the CoE worked with had roughly five percent of their workforces teleworking before the pandemic, requiring only a few hundred VPN licenses. Maximum telework demanded tens of thousands of licenses faster than traditional acquisition allowed. Grandt-Nesher argued this was also a reskilling effort: showing agencies how acquisition can be done in a way that accelerates response without exposing the agency to risk.
The Infrastructure Optimization CoE helped agencies build skills within their CISO shops to streamline authorities to operate for software-as-a-service applications, such as online meeting check-in tools, that became necessary under mass telework. Grandt-Nesher noted that many CISO shops do not yet see reskilling and training on new technologies as part of their wheelhouse, and warned that a haphazard release of insufficient or unsupported tools will impede user adoption.