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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Information_Security_Management_Act_of_2002

Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002
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The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (”FISMA”, 44 U.S.C. § 3541, et seq.) is a United States federal law enacted in 2002 as Title III of the E-Government Act of 2002 (Pub.L. 107-347, 116 Stat. 2899). The act recognized the importance of information security to the economic and national security interests of the United States.[1] The act requires each federal agency to develop, document, and implement an agency-wide program to provide information security for the information and information systems that support the operations and assets of the agency, including those provided or managed by another agency, contractor, or other source.[1]

FISMA has brought attention within the federal government to cybersecurity and explicitly emphasized a “risk-based policy for cost-effective security”.[1] FISMA requires agency program officials, chief information officers, and inspectors general (IGs) to conduct annual reviews of the agencys information security program and report the results to Office of Management and Budget (OMB). OMB uses this data to assist in its oversight responsibilities and to prepare this annual report to Congress on agency compliance with the act.[2] In FY 2008, federal agencies spent $6.2 billion securing the governments total information technology investment of approximately $68 billion or about 9.2 percent of the total information technology portfolio.[3]

Implementation of FISMA
In accordance with FISMA, NIST is responsible for developing standards, guidelines, and associated methods and techniques for providing adequate information security for all agency operations and assets, excluding national security systems. NIST works closely with federal agencies to improve their understanding and implementation of FISMA to protect their information and information systems and publishes standards and guidelines which provide the foundation for strong information security programs at agencies. NIST performs its statutory responsibilities through the Computer Security Division of the Information Technology Laboratory.[4] NIST develops standards, metrics, tests, and validation programs to promote, measure, and validate the security in information systems and services. NIST hosts the following:

FISMA implementation project[5]
Information Security Automation Program (ISAP) * National Vulnerability Database (NVD) the U.S. government content repository for ISAP and SCAP. NVD is the U.S. government repository of standards based vulnerability management data. This data enables automation of vulnerability management, security measurement, and compliance (e.g., FISMA)[6]

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