ATO AUTOMATION CASE STUDY

DHS

Security Engineering & Pentesting
to Enhance Cybersecurity

DHS engaged Graham Technologies to assess its IT infrastructure and systems and deliver AWS cloud solutions for security engineering to improve standardization, automation, and insights. Graham automated ATO assessments, streamlined processes, and modernized tools to enhance cybersecurity architecture, controls validation, and effectiveness and established development labs and production penetration testing. We built an enhanced, integrated dashboard to drive rapid security decisions.

CHALLENGES

Improve Automation, Reliability and Security for DHS

Improve security architecture and controls
Standardize data-centric security requirements
Minimized security subjectivity
Effectively integrate penetration testing
Enhance rapid security posture readiness
Better decision making via integrated dashboard
Establish continuous ATO and compliance
Use OSCAL to automate and reduce ATO cycles

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR CYBERSECURITY & PENTESTING CAPABILITIES >

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR WORK
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Cybersecurity Architecture

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Cloud Security + Compliance

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ATO Automation

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Security Engineering

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Cloud Administration

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Cloud DevSecOps

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Penetration Testing

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Data Orchestration

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Cloud Development

Graham Technologies utilized Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, Elastic Compute Cloud, Lambda,
API Gateway, Simple Queue Service, Simple Storage Service and CloudWatch.

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR AWS CAPABILITIES >

US HomeLand Security

The DHS USCIS Information Security Division is responsible for overseeing security management, governance, and compliance to ensure the security of IT infrastructure and information systems. This entails safeguarding the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all information stored, processed, and transmitted through USCIS information systems.
RESULTS + IMPACT

Automated Assessments to Reduce ATO Cycle Times + Errors

Graham assessed IT infrastructure and systems and delivered AWS cloud solutions to achieve DHS security engineering objectives to improve automation, standardization, and insights. Using OSCAL, we automated documentation reviews and control assessments to significantly reduce manual work. We modernized tools and streamlined processes to enhance cybersecurity architecture, security controls, and overall effectiveness – resulting in development labs and production pentesting capabilities.

  • Enhanced cybersecurity architecture, controls validation, effectiveness measures, and dashboard visualization
  • Centralized and automated data analysis to reduce manual assessment data collection from disparate systems
  • Utilized AWS environments and tools to enhance resource and cost management flexibility as needs evolve
  • Established CI/CD guardrails to reduce risk of escaped vulnerabilities with pipelines that terminate
  • Automated dashboards for seamless information sharing among systems and security stakeholders to avoid delays
  • Enhanced pentesting capabilities and reduced risk of missing vulnerabilities like Zero Day attacks
  • Automated variance assessment between software development pipeline and production environments
  • Reduced risk of infrastructure or service misconfigurations by preventing changes that bypass pipeline checks
  • Setup applications to visualize security posture and automated assessment artifacts (FedRAMP, OSCAL)
  • Seamlessly coordinated assessments and change management, reducing ATO cycle times and human error

LOOKING TO AUTOMATE THE
ATO ASSESSMENT PROCESS?