Van Scoyoc Associates

Congratulations to the City of Torrance, CA, a valued VSA client, on the one-year anniversary of the Mary K. Giordano Regional Transit Center. Since its grand opening in June 2023, the center has served as an essential hub for South Bay residents. The center has been crucial in enhancing regional mobility, connecting Torrance Transit routes with other providers, and reducing single-occupancy vehicle trips. #TorranceTransit #TorranceCA #regionalmobility #transit #sustainabletransportation #vanscoyocassociates

Norma Krayem, Van Scoyoc Associates Vice President and Chair of the Cybersecurity, Privacy & Digital Innovation Practice was interviewed by Sara Friedman of Inside Cybersecurity on the recent issuance of the new National Security Memorandum 22 (NSM) issued by President Biden. The NSM centralized a considerable amount of new programmatic oversight and control in DHS and CISA, the key according to Norma “is to ensure that DHS and CISA are able to both fully carry out the mission, but for it to not lose sight that it needs to fully consult and work with stakeholders on the mandates that impact them, that includes before major decisions are made, not after the fact.” Norma said, “As a former regulator, I appreciate the challenges to implement large scale mandates, but it’s still critical to ensure that stakeholders are truly part of the process before major decisions are made, not after.” The NSM signed by the President on April 30th keeps in place the 16 critical infrastructure sectors and codifies CISA’s role as the “National Coordinator for the Security and Resilience of Critical Infrastructure.”  Norma said, “In 2013, we knew what the threat was, had seen it in action and were trying to explain it to owners and operators that immediate action was needed then, most of whom didn’t believe the risk existed, other than defense, financial services and the communications sector."  “Fast forward to 2024, while progress has been made across critical infrastructure, there are still sectors that have not fully embraced the risk nor made full investments to manage the risk. We’ve seen that play out just recently in the healthcare sector,” Norma said.  “However,” Norma added, “as the NSM is implemented, we need is a balance, those sectors that are sophisticated, spend millions on cyber and work to help others, should not be lumped into the same bucket as those that don’t. The rising tide lifts all boats but best place to focus on is filling the urgent gaps that exist on resilience and security, not regulating on top of existing regulations just because.”   #cyberdefense #cybersecurity #criticalinfrastructure #nationalcriticalfunctions #governmentcontractors #cyberincidentreporting #cybersecuritymandates To read the full article, click here:   

Nice job by Roger Harris, President of PADGETT BUSINESS SERVICES®, testifying before the House Committee on Small Business to discuss the implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act and the new Beneficial Ownership Information reporting requirements. VSA has been honored to represent Padgett for more than 15 years and looks forward to continuing to work with Roger and the whole Padgett team on this and many other issues important to small businesses.    #smallbusiness #tax #vanscoyocassociates

Earlier this week, VSA's Leslee Gilbert joined the UIDP #HBCUEngage 2024 for a conversation on innovation, research opportunities, and strategy development for HBCUs. #UIDP #HBCU #highereducation #research #vanscoyocassociates

Congratulations to Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA) for taking the next step in replacing the 40+ year old downtown Clearwater transit center to make it ADA accessible and able to accommodate all buses in the PSTA fleet. This is a great partnership between FTA, which provided $20 million in RAISE grant funding, the City of Clearwater, and the Florida Department of Transportation. #transportation #transit #vanscoyocassociates

Norma Krayem, Van Scoyoc Associates Vice President and Chair of the Cybersecurity, Privacy & Digital Innovation Practice was interviewed by Sara Friedman of Inside Cybersecurity regarding the House Oversight Committee’s FISMA reform bill and markup. The House bill along with the Senate measure, S. 2251, looks to update the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) has not been updated since 2014 and includes important security requirements for all government contractors. Part of the House bill requires all federal contractors to report cyber attacks to the U.S. government within eight-hours. Norma noted that “the focus by Congress on FISMA reform is an important topic as the cyber landscape and risk posture continues to change. The House moved very quickly..to mark up a bill that appears to make major changes to S. 2251, including removing parts of that bill such as data and logging retention for incident response; CISA agency liaisons and the security operations center shared services.” Krayem indicated that, “as we continue to go through the bill, it’s important for industry to understand how all of this goes together and further review is needed to make that assessment. But the key questions include: How is the current approach by the House the same or different from the FAR draft rules issued by the Administration [in October], CIRCIA and other mandates.” Krayem said, “In the review thus far, there appear[s] to be both different deadlines on what to report, when to report and on the basis of what decision-making reports would be made. For example, the FAR draft incident reporting rule says 8 hours to report; the House bill draft says no later than 1 day after a contractor ‘has a reasonable basis to suspect or conclude;’ all of which is different than CIRCIA which says that reporting would be no earlier than 72 hours after the covered entity ‘reasonably believes a covered cyber incident has occurred.’”   #cyberdefense #cybersecurity #criticalinfrastructure #nationalcriticalfunctions #governmentcontractors #cyberincidentreporting #cybersecuritymandates To read the full article, click here:

Yesterday, VSA Vice President Jim Crum participated in a panel discussion at the National Waterways Conference Legislative Summit held in Washington, D.C. Along with other industry experts, Jim provided an analysis of the regulatory, legislative, and judicial landscape that affects water and waterways entities. Jim spoke directly to the challenges and opportunities presented by the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, PFAS, and cybersecurity in shaping the future of waterways management. Jim offers strategic guidance on these very issues to his clients, which include state departments of water resources, municipal water entities, and rural water cooperatives. #waterpolicy #waterresources #cybersecurity #PFAS #infrastrucutre #federaladvocacy #vanscoyocassociates

Congratulations to the NMDP (formerly the National Marrow Donor Program) on another successful fly-in to support the national registry’s lifesaving mission. A total of 59 advocates met with 105 House and Senate offices to thank Congress for its continued funding for the registry and to support legislation to provide unpaid leave and job protection for the volunteer donors who stand up to answer the call to save a life. The stories of these patients, caregivers, donors, and couriers are heartfelt and impactful. Thank you to all of them who took time off to share their stories with their Members of Congress.   #NMDP #SaveMoreLives #CellTherapy #vanscoyocassociates

Norma Krayem, Van Scoyoc Associates Vice President and Chair of the Cybersecurity, Privacy & Digital Innovation Practice was interviewed by Sara Friedman of Inside Cybersecurity regarding NIST’s recent update to the cybersecurity framework known as CSF 2.0. Norma emphasized that “when EO 13636 came out in 2013, the reality is that the cyber environment was a very different time, the risk awareness of systemic cyber threats was very low other than in a few sectors. The EO clearly issued a challenge to industry to come together with the U.S. Government to create a Cybersecurity Framework that all could use, and the end result was a fantastic success.” Norma indicated that “industry worked with NIST, the White House and other key agencies and each other, to create a nimble, flexible document that was easy to use. Since then, other sectors like financial services and communications have mapped their sector to the Framework which is invaluable.” Norma said, “having worked in, and with, industry on the Framework since the very beginning, the product has been a 100% success,” that integrates “11 years of lessons learned and best practices. It also comes at a much-needed time when cyber risks to critical infrastructure and beyond are at all-time highs.”   #cyberdefense #cybersecurity #criticalinfrastructure #nationalcriticalfunctions #supplychain   To read the full article, click here:  

VSA was honored to host the National Institute of Water Resources (NIWR) annual meeting earlier this month. VSA Vice President Leslee Gilbert lead a discussion with attendees on advocating for the Water Resources Research Act program ahead of their meetings with Members of Congress. Institute Directors also heard from Representative Melanie Stansbury (D, NM-1) and the Department of the Interior’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, Michael Brain, on federal priorities in addressing water resource challenges. #vanscoyocassociates #waterresources #flyin