Managing IA Certification and Accreditation
With information assurance (IA) comes a whole new challenge for managing the accreditation status of systems. The NAVSEA CIO office certainly shared this concern with hundreds of research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) and operational systems Certification and Accreditation (C&A) packages in play at any given time.
CHALLENGE:
Tracking review status as it moved through the C&A process was one priority; ensuring application completeness was another.
SOLUTION:
McKean IA and programming analysts recognized that while the customer’s current approach was adequate, it was labor intensive and made reporting difficult. After mapping the process and identifying improvements, we created a new database application that captured expanded information, and incorporated reporting on the most important IA metrics.
SUCCESS:
Now NAVSEA has greater insight into the time it takes for programs to get through the accreditation application, while also offering visibility into the greatest IA certification challenges. Ultimately, the rollout of the NAVSEA Certification & Accreditation Tracking System (CATS), replaced manual research with almost instantaneous information, increased accuracy of C&A analysis, and improved our customer’s ability to satisfy the needs of their constituents.