IBM’s Alice Fakir on Updated Version of NIST Cybersecurity Framework

Alice Fakir, a federal cybersecurity services partner at IBM, said the updated version of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework puts a focus on timeliness and reporting and managing supply chain risks and third-party risks, FedTech reported Wednesday.

“This updated framework is calling for better awareness and improvement of security controls around supply chain and third-party risk, but adding that layer of communication is critical,” Fakir said.

Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 highlights the need for organizations to set up supply chain risk programs and implement a comprehensive risk management program and outlines new steps to ensure effective information-sharing practices across the federal government regarding these programs.

“It’s providing a broader set of activities that are required so that you can manage your third-party engagement, whereas before it was a very myopic view of managing security of an application that sits within a specific environment,” Fakir said.

“What’s so significant about this new update to the risk management framework is a bigger focus on third-party risk management and supply chain risk management,” she added.

In February, NIST released the CSF 2.0 framework that comes with a reference tool to allow users to search, view and export data from the framework’s core guidance in human-consumable and machine-readable formats.

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