Information Systems and Cybersecurity – Annual Report 2024

IT Security and Modernization

In 2024, the Judiciary made progress on a multi-year strategy to modernize and secure its IT infrastructure. The effort is focused on protecting the Judiciary from cyber threats, modernizing IT infrastructure, and hiring and retaining a workforce with the requisite skills to support the new or upgraded systems.

Cybersecurity: During the year, there were several initiatives aimed at enabling better detection of cyber threats and protection of Judiciary assets. They included security risk assessments at the circuit level, updates to the Judiciary Information Security Framework, research on data classification processes, automation of threat detection functions, and testing and integration of multicloud environments and security monitoring capabilities.

The Judiciary is committed to Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), an information security model that requires verification for every user and device that attempts to access an organization’s network and technology resources and allows such access only to authorized people and devices.

Modernization: The Judiciary worked to leverage more secure commercial cloud services and embraced process automation technologies where appropriate. Cloud services will provide increased performance and functionality for Judiciary systems and applications, while use of automation technologies will make many current manual and repetitive processes more streamlined and efficient.

Enterprise Architecture: An IT standards development process was put in place that applies to all courts and Judiciary offices. The new standards will help align business functions and IT strategies, increase efficiency, aid decision making, and facilitate planning for new technologies.

Workforce Development: IT leaders partnered with human resources leaders to develop proposals to improve efforts to hire, develop, and support a modern IT workforce. 

International Travel Policy

In 2024, the Judiciary implemented the first phase of a two-phase policy to provide better security and reliability when employees travel abroad. During Phase One, remote access to internal Judiciary networks and systems, such as the Judiciary’s Data Communications Network, was blocked by users outside the United States and its territories. Judges and staff continue to be able to take government-furnished equipment on international trips and can access Judiciary email through web browsers and mobile applications. In addition, employees can access Microsoft Teams for meetings and messaging and other Microsoft applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Public websites like PACER, USCourts.gov, and courts’ public web pages also remain accessible. Phase Two of the policy calls for additional restrictions on accessing Judiciary systems outside the country.

IT Modernization for Federal Defender Organizations

The federal defender IT staff focused on several key priorities in 2024 as part of a multi-year project to modernize federal defender IT and cybersecurity operations. Priorities for the year included improved security logging and monitoring, cybersecurity training for federal defender IT staff, lawyers, and other staff; and modernizing the federal defenders’ network.

In addition, a new cloud-based management platform was deployed to protect IT equipment and other assets when federal defenders work remotely, which they often have to do in order to maintain contact with clients.

The expansive project includes efforts to improve network security to protect client, witness, and court data against potential threats and vulnerabilities; to use cloud services to optimize resource use in a secure manner; to implement secure collaboration services so staff can seamlessly and securely collaborate with outside parties, protect client confidentiality, and maintain data integrity; and to modernize national infrastructure to align with ZTA.