As a trusted NOAA partner, GAMA-1 Technologies provided end-to-end Information Assurance,  Information Security,  Cyber Security, and Data Protection / Privacy Services for five Program Offices and all systems within the National Weather Service (NWS) Annual Assessments (A&A) contracts. Through GAMA-1’s NWS contract, we managed and developed an IT security program and operational environment which involved assessing, analyzing, monitoring, and mitigating risks.

For FY2019 our Information Security Assessment and Authorization (A&A) Specialists supported an enterprise-wide service performing 19 standardized, reliable, and high-quality annual assessments for all the NWS FISMA high, and moderate systems, to include 13 penetration tests for 5 high, and 8 moderate FISMA systems. We complied with NOAA’s Risk Management Framework (RMF), FISMA, DOC, NOAA, and NWS IT standards and security policies. GAMA-1 ensured consistency of our product and service, which is key to our customer satisfaction. The A&A team conducted assessment findings reviews sessions to ensure that the identified findings, vulnerabilities, threats, threat agents, existing safeguards, consequences, recommended mitigation tasks, procedures, and processes are executed exactly as intended. Our 30+ CISSP certified professionals ensured that all 25 high, moderate, and low NWS FISMA systems were compliant with federal requirements and guidelines by providing FISMA continuous monitoring support such as annual reviews and recommendations on system security documentation including but not limited to IT security policies and procedures, System Security Plans, Configuration Management Plan, Contingency Plan and Test, Incident Response Plan, PTA/PIA, etc., we managed a corrective Plan of Action & Milestones (POA&Ms) and any FISMA related guidance to NWS ITSOs and ISSOs. 

We facilitated planning for business continuity / disaster recovery, certifying and accrediting systems, security technical assessments, monitoring security, reporting / responding to incidents, and taking corrective actions. Our Security engineers work with the CISOs, ITSOs, and ISSOs to successfully manage and architect IT security services across the agency. We ensured secure operations for IT infrastructure, networks, applications, databases, equipment, and assets. We performed the required system security scans to assess vulnerabilities and to ensure the proper “hardening” to protect against potential threats. We have worked with our customers to address the ever-expanding IT Security threat landscape. We instituted security programs that provided the controls and a solid basis of proven security measures from industry best-practices, such as, ensuring that applications identify and follow security requirements; implementing multi-layered perimeter defense; hardening internal resources; securing Personal Identifiable Information (PII); and instituting HSPD-12 within an effective security risk management structures.