Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 - Implementation of FISMA

Implementation of FISMA

In accordance with FISMA, NIST is responsible for developing standards, guidelines, and associated methods and techniques for providing adequate information security for all agency operations and assets, excluding national security systems. NIST works closely with federal agencies to improve their understanding and implementation of FISMA to protect their information and information systems and publishes standards and guidelines which provide the foundation for strong information security programs at agencies. NIST performs its statutory responsibilities through the Computer Security Division of the Information Technology Laboratory. NIST develops standards, metrics, tests, and validation programs to promote, measure, and validate the security in information systems and services. NIST hosts the following:

• FISMA implementation project
• Information Security Automation Program (ISAP)
• National Vulnerability Database (NVD) – the U.S. government content repository for ISAP and SCAP. NVD is the U.S. government repository of standards based vulnerability management data. This data enables automation of vulnerability management, security measurement, and compliance (e.g., FISMA)