The Wrap: Monday After CrowdStrike – SSA, DoD, and Congress; Senate Cannabis Hiring Bill

Welcome to The Wrap for Monday, July 22!?

From the newsroom at MeriTalk, it’s the quickest read in Federal tech news. Here’s what you need to know today:

SSA Reopens Offices

Federal government operations affected by Friday’s 微软 outage ?linked to a defective update to CrowdStrike ’s Falcon security software appeared to be recovering their footing today, with no announcements from agencies of new problems tied to the outage. The biggest piece of good news on the recovery front came from the Social Security Administration (SSA), which had closed its offices on Friday due to the problem. SSA said this morning its offices would be open to serve the public, adding that “staff impacted by the widespread Microsoft and CrowdStrike issues are being brought back online.” Further up the remediation chain the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an?update ?on Sunday that pointed customers to a Microsoft?blog post ?that provides links to various remediation solutions. In the blog post, Microsoft estimates the outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices. CrowdStrike also published an?update ?today, which notes that the company is testing a new technique to accelerate impacted system remediation.

DoD Sails Through Glitch

While the United States Department of Defense (DoD) was as a matter of policy mostly noncommittal on Friday about whether the Microsoft outage was impacting Pentagon networks, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff offered some more definitive comment on that during his address to the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “For all reports I have right now, [there have been] no impact on DoD operations,” Gen. C.Q. Brown said. He also took the opportunity to put the importance of cybersecurity into perspective. “How we use our software [and] how we use our tools is important, and the things that we do particularly in DoD to protect our capabilities to ensure that we can still protect the nation, even when you have – whether it’s a glitch or an attack – that would be best postured to be able to support,” Brown said. He added that the CrowdStrike glitch should serve as a reminder to not just government officials but to the nation as a whole “why it’s important …to protect ourselves and be best postured.” The general added, “I’m sure our adversaries are looking at this as a way to, I would say, put sand in our gears when we’re trying to generate combat power to go to respond to a crisis anywhere around the world.”

Lawmakers Want Answers

When the dust settles on the outage, it’s likely Congress is going to want to know more about what happened. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., sent a?letter ?on Friday to the United States Department of Defense Acting Chief Information Officer Leslie Beavers for a briefing on the impact of the outage within the Pentagon. “A single point of failure in a cybersecurity strategy has proven time and time again to be a threat to our national security,” the senator said, adding, “we cannot continue to accept and allow software problems to cripple our civilian and government infrastructure—answers in this case are necessary, and a reexamination across the board of cyber-safeguards is needed moving forward.” Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., said in a social media post on Friday that he was calling on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency component to investigate. “Both the U.S. Congress and the public are entitled to a full accounting of what went wrong with CrowdStrike’s software and what can be done to prevent such a disruptive event from repeating itself in the future,” he said.

Senate Cannabis Hiring Bill ??

Changing the practical impact of longstanding Federal government policy can take a long time – and sometimes action by Congress to rewrite Federal law. That thought is behind legislation introduced earlier this month by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., to prevent Federal agencies from disqualifying job applicants solely because of their reported recreational or medical use of marijuana.?Sen. Peters, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced the?Dismantling Outdated Obstacles and Barriers to Individual Employment Act (DOOBIE Act) ?on July 11, and explained that the measure would align Federal statutes with current U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) guidance that says past marijuana use alone shouldn’t disqualify candidates.?Despite those agency-level policy evolutions, Federal laws still on the books may result in qualified candidates being denied Federal employment or security clearances due to past marijuana use.?“Many potential applicants remain hesitant to pursue federal positions due to a fear of automatic disqualification,” the senator’s office said.?“By providing this much-needed clarity for agencies and applicants, we will ensure that the federal government can recruit and retain the best and brightest to serve our nation,” Sen. Peters said.

Once again, let’s “call IT a day,” but we'll bring you more tomorrow. Until then please check the MeriTalk breaking news website throughout the day for the latest on government IT people, process, and policy. And finally, please hit the news tip jar [with leads, breaking news, or simply your two cents] at [email protected] .