A complaint of political inference by former President Donald Trump in the Defense Department’s award of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud computing contract to Microsoft in 2019 may now proceed.
Protecting the supply chain and CUI will only become more challenging as the number of defense contractors and the amount of data they house continues to increase.
By Lauren Williams
May 05, 2021
While better data would help the Defense Department more effectively assess investments and risks over time, according to a watchdog official, several challenges exist.
First off is the ability of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment to conduct data-driven oversight of the individual services’ weapons programs, Shelby Oakley, the director for contracting and national security acquisition for the Government Accountability Office, told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness at an April 28 hearing. Oversight is still important even if the services are running the show for their own programs,” she said. “DOD, as the portfolio manager of all of [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] weapon programs, has to play a role in determining what we are investing in and understanding and deciding what those risks are and where they are.
The vulnerability disclosure program, which was started from the Defense Digital Service s 2016 Hack the Pentagon initiative, was initially restricted to public-facing websites and applications.