In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, congress passed, and the president signed, the E-Government Act, which formally recognized the importance of information security to the United States' economic and national security interests. Title III of that act, the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requires federal agencies to develop, document and implement agency-wide information security programs to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information and systems that support the operations and assets of the agency. Compliance is not just a good idea, it's the law.

This paper details:

• Why Information Security is essential to economic and national security
• Similar requirements for deploying, maintaining, and auditing controls
• Establishing appropriate security control procedures with NIST
• Meeting FISMA requirements with configuration auditing to reduce the ongoing cost of compliance