The NIST Risk Management Framework: Problems and recommendations
Don Maclean · Cyber security. · 2017
Cyber security assessment initiatives and frameworks abound in the US government, but their effectiveness is inconsistent. The most important law from which these frameworks and assessments arose is the Federal Information Systems Management Act (FISMA), passed in 2002, and updated as the Federal Information Systems Modernization Act in 2014. The law’s broad scope included a mandate to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), charging it to create methods and standards to assess and optimise the cyber security posture of US government agencies. NIST’s flagship methodology, Risk Management Framework (RMF), is comprehensive and fundamentally sound, but years of experience have exposed many flaws — some stemming from lack of proper adoption and execution, some from unintended consequences, and others arising from the relentless pace of innovation in technology. This paper examines the RMF’s weaknesses, and offers recommendations for improvement.