March 17, 2006
DHS Flunks Yet Again
Once again, the DHS has brought home their cybersecurity report card, and for the third straight year they've flunked across the board. The government reform committee, in this year's FISMA report card once again deemed that DHS maintains a security posture that is "unacceptably low." Said chairman Tom Davis,
DHS must have its house in order and should become a security leader among agencies. What's holding them up?
Business Week has picked this up and ran with it in their "Department of Homeland Insecurity" coverage, saying:
Flaws in the government's systems come in spite of a big and growing IT budget. The federal government's IT budget rose to $62.2 billion in the year ended September, 2005, from $50.4 billion in 2002. Of that, $4.8 billion was for IT at the DHS, including $2.35 billion specifically for IT security, according to the OMB. The entire DHS IT budget was $1.8 billion in 2002, the year it was created.
62.2 billion dollars and they can't get it done... Perhaps some after-school activities (glee club?) might help them stay focused on their studies; or maybe we can refer the DHS to the SchoolMatters website hosted by the Department of Education... After all, the DoE scored a "C" this year (up from last year's "C-") - thereby proving that "no agency left behind" really is working.