The General Services Administration has teamed up with several other federal agencies, including the Defense Department, to create a cybersecurity shared service as part of efforts to secure government websites.
GSA said Tuesday the shared service will work to address cost and maintenance challenges associated with the implementation of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure used to protect connections between websites and users.
Seventy-eight percent of federal websites have complied with the Office of Management and Budget‘s 2015 policy that requires the use of HTTPS across all public-facing government web domains, GSA noted.
The shared service is intended to help agencies modernize the availability and distribution of web certificates as well as automate mission systems and software; standardize government HTTPS configurations; and increase transparency for online public services.
GSA added participating agencies will work to fully adopt HTTPS and HTTP Strict Transport Security as well as build a new public key infrastructure and develop a certificate transparency log to boost public trust.
