OMB: Federal IT security’s better but still not good enough

Agencies have made progress in evaluating and securing systems, but serious and pervasive problems persist and much work remains to be done, according to the Office of Management and Budget. OMB released its second report to Congress last month under the Government Information Security Reform Act. The report compares the performance of 14 departments and 10 independent agencies in fiscal 2002 with baseline data collected in 2001. Future reports will be made under the Federal Information Security Management Act. Agencies were evaluated individually and not given an overall score or ranked against one another. Despite across-the-board improvements in eight areas, more than a third of federal systems overall still have not been assessed for risk and lack up-to-date security plans, and less than half have been certified and accredited for use. The 2001 GISRA report identified governmentwide areas of weakness: lack of performance measures and senior management attention, poor security education and awareness, failure to include security in IT capital planning, failure to ensure security of contractor services, and poor information sharing. Full Story