“NATIONAL SECURITY MAGAZINE” By Allyson Park
“The Office of Small Business Programs launched Project Spectrum, https://www.projectspectrum.io/#/ a platform that provides cybersecurity education, training programs, tool reviews and self-assessments for small businesses at no cost”
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“The Defense Department will be starting a new program for “commercial tool demonstrations” to help small businesses learn about and strengthen cybersecurity measures “within the next year,” a department official said Aug. 8.
In fiscal year 2023, Congress required DoD by 2027 “to establish a new program where we actually do commercial tool demonstrations for small businesses to help them to understand what their risks are when it comes to foreign control and influence,” Farooq Mitha, director of the DoD Office of Small Business Programs, said during a talk at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition.
“We’re not waiting until 2027. We’re trying to roll that out within the next year, because I think it’s really, really important. We’re not resourced to do it. We’re digging around and figuring out how we can respond,” he said.
Small businesses make up “99.9 percent of all U.S. businesses as well as 73 percent of companies in the defense industrial base, and [in 2022,] small businesses were awarded over 25 percent of all DoD prime contracts,” the department’s Small Business Strategy, released in January 2023, reported.
The strategy was designed to make it easier for small business to “do business with us, reduce barriers to entry, create some more alignment between our small business programs and provide more resources to small companies that are looking to do business with us,” Mitha said. “[We’re] getting back to a place where we’re relevant, we’re in the mix of all the things that need to be done inside the department to advocate and champion for small companies.”
As the department continues to look to the National Defense Industrial Strategy, published January 2024, small businesses cannot be forgotten, as they play an important role in the implementation of the strategy, he noted. The four priorities of the strategy are resilient supply chains, workforce awareness, flexible acquisition and economic deterrence.
From an economic deterrence perspective, small businesses are “extremely vulnerable,” Mitha said.
“[With] our prime contractors, our sub-tier suppliers, there’s a lot of risk, cybersecurity-related risk, foreign ownership, control and influence related risks,” he said. “So, what we’re really doing from my office’s view is … helping companies pre-[Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification] understand what their cyber risks are.”
The Office of Small Business Programs launched Project Spectrum,https://www.projectspectrum.io/#/ is a platform that provides cybersecurity education, training programs, tool reviews and self-assessments for small businesses at no cost, Mitha said.
“We’re also providing education and training on foreign ownership, control and influence [on] small businesses,” he said. “Because you all know that when you put [in] a [Small Business Innovation Research] proposal, it will have a cursory preliminary due diligence conducted on your company. So, you want companies to understand what those risks are.”
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