Stephen Rice, the TSA (U.S. Transportation Security Administration) chief information officer, said that the Government’s recent budget reduction helped him take a step back and evaluate the agency’s tech needs seriously.
Congress reduced TSA’s IT budget by about $65 million over the last three years. Rice said that forced him to cut around the edges and delay things such as certain IT refresh cycles and other upgrades.
“As we started looking at delays in recapitalization and what that meant from a cybersecurity perspective, and where there portions of the infrastructure that were no longer going to be supported by the manufacturer.
That would no long allow us to patch or no longer be supported, and what was the risk perspective that would create for the organization?” he said.
The TSA found about $62 million for a one-time infusion of funding to address many of those cyber and IT areas that had been neglected over the last few years.
Among the funded projects:
Modernizing TSA’s desktops and laptops. Currently, he said TSA is running Windows 7 and he wants to run the latest version of the Microsoft operating system, Windows 10, to help improve cybersecurity at the desktop. Rice said he also wants to bring in tablet computers to replace some of laptops and desktops. He said that upgrade will start in January and should be done within a year.
Mr. Rice said the TSA found the savings through unspent money in programs and contracts that came in under budget.
Interesting win here for Microsoft.
source:windows10update
