The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”) released a new guide on August 2, 2024 titled, “Software Acquisition Guide for Government Enterprise Consumers: Software Assurance in the Cyber-Supply Chain Risk Management (C-SCRM) Lifecycle” (the “Software Acquisition Guide”).  This guide addresses the cybersecurity risks associated with the acquisition and use of third-party developed software and certain related physical products in an agency enterprise environment, and provides recommendations to agency personnel for understanding, addressing, and mitigating those risks.  This guide was followed on August 6, 2024, by a separate guide issued jointly by CISA and the FBI titled, “Secure By Demand Guide: How Software Customers Can Drive a Secure Technology Ecosystem” (the “Secure By Demand Guide”).  Together, these two guides provide agency and industry personnel a series of questions that can be used to obtain information from suppliers, set technical requirements, and develop contract terms for the acquisition of secure software as contemplated by the Biden Administration’s May 2021 Cybersecurity Executive Order (“EO”) and the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) memoranda implementing that Order. 

The specific impact that the guides will have on federal procurements and software developers in the federal supply chain is not yet clear.  With this said, all software producers in the federal supply chain are currently required to fully comply with new secure software development minimum requirements promulgated by the Office of Management and Budget by September 8 of this year, as detailed in our prior post here.  The Software Acquisition Guide in particular builds on those requirements and thus could be adopted by agencies that opt to impose additional obligations on contractors beyond those minimum requirements.