Report Suggests Federal Agencies are not Meeting Cybersecurity Standards

A report from the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on investigations, chaired by Ohio Senator Rob Portman, stated that eight federal agencies did not meet the standard criteria for cybersecurity over the past decade. 

10 years of reports were examined throughout multiple federal departments. The eight agencies found to be vulnerable to attacks all use legacy systems that the respective vendors no longer support with security updates.

In addition, seven out of the eight agencies did not supply proper protection for personally identifiable information, and security patches were not installed in time for six of those agencies. Even more, over the time of the 10 month probe, five of the agencies were reported to have not maintained accurate IT asset inventories. 

Rob Portman stated as well that there were 35,277 cyber incidents in just 2017. 

“Hackers with malicious intent can and do attack federal government cyber infrastructure consistently," said Portman. “The federal government can, and must, do a better job of shoring up our defenses against the rising cybersecurity threats."

The 95 page report can be found in the link provided.

Story via Cleveland.com