Fergie's Tech Blog

FISMA: Protecting Government Agencies from Hackers

Judi Hasson writes on CIO Today:

Many agencies have yet to lock down their systems under the Federal Information Security Management Act. During the 1990s, the government transitioned from mainframe computers to networked computing, connecting federal employees to one another as well as to the public. Agencies also began to create Web sites to present information to the public and offer new ways to access services.

But the new networked government also opened up databases to hackers with malicious intent, as well as federal employees who were inclined to snoop through private data. Agencies rarely included plans to secure data or deploy applications that could monitor intrusions or detect whether employees were accessing forbidden files when they began to develop a system or network.

That basically left federal systems wide open to cyberattacks, which increased in intensity for years.

posted by Fergie @ 7/23/2008 12:44:00 PM