Congressional report: DHS lags on IT security
The Department of Homeland Security is one of seven U.S. government agencies that earned a failing grade on an annual scorecard designed to indicate the level of progress being made to ensure the security of information technology systems.
The House Government Reform subcommittee on technology information policy, intergovernmental relations and the census, gave Homeland Security an “F” for protecting information systems, including completing an inventory of mission critical systems. The Department of Transportation earned a “D+.”
The 24 agencies covered by the study earned a combined score of “D.”
The fourth annual Federal Computer Security Report Card has implications for private industry, which shares a lot of commercially sensitive and proprietary data with the government.
Much of the grade is based on whether agencies have completed required paperwork to document how their agencies protect data and can recover from a system disruption.