Top National Cybersecurity Award Announced

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., federal CIO Vivek Kundra, and State Department CISO John Streufert won the U.S. National Cybersecurity Leadership Award on Tuesday. The award was presented by the SANS Institute to recognize their transformation of federal cybersecurity.

It's not much of a secret around Washington circles that Carper, Kundra, and Streufert have been instrumental toward stopping the billions of dollars of waste on certification and accreditation reporting required by FISMA.

"They radically changed national priorities and U.S. government policy, and they acted to replace the wasted effort with continuous security monitoring and accompanying day-by-day, system-by-system accountability so measurement is immediately converted into action," said Alan Paller, director of research at SANS. "Their impact goes far beyond government."

Already hundreds of commercial organizations and government agencies are beginning to implement continuous monitoring systems of their own. The continuous monitoring system not only catches more vulnerabilities, it's far cheaper to implement than its counterpart. This is a big win for the country, and a nice recognition for Streufert, Kundra and Carper.