Officials at the Agriculture Department, with 29 agencies and more than 500 computer information systems, expects to spend as much as $60 million to certify and accredit those systems during the next five years.

"It's a major undertaking — it's going to take us some time," Gregory Parham, acting associate chief information officer for cybersecurity at USDA told Federal Computer Week.

In an interview this week, Parham said two USDA data centers, the National Finance Center in New Orleans and the National Information Technology Center in Kansas City, Mo., have taken the lead in certifying and accrediting their information systems, as the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 requires.

By Florence Olsen at FCW.

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