WASHINGTON — The Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday issued new guidelines that require all federal agencies to buy and use only software that complies with development and security processes approved by the federal government.
“Federal agencies must only use software provided by software producers who can attest to complying with the government-specified secure software development practices, as described in the NIST Guidance,” OMB Director Shalanda Young said in a memo.
NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, laid out principles in February for so-called secure software development that companies can use to assess whether various components that go into assembling complex software are safe and free of bugs or backdoors that could allow hackers to penetrate systems.
