If you missed the Wall Street Journal today, go buy one for this article alone. Hayden, who is one of the smartest guys around in cyber anywhere, let loose on OPM. For most security professionals he is not saying anything we have not said before, but he says it more straight forward than most - "raw incompetence" led to the disclosure of these records to China. He said, if he had had the chance to get the same kind of information from China, and it was available, he would have gone after it and not asked for permission.
The acts of ommision and comission by OPM are as bad as anything we have heard. They are firing offenses, and yet the White House is staunchly behind they appointee. We have been in Washington long enough to know that lasts until the time is right, or a suitable replacement is found, but it doesn't last forever.
In the meantime, Where is Michael Daniel? Yes, he is the White House Cyberzar (reduced to Coordinator in this Administration) on the NSC staff. Nobody knows what a coordinator does, but the Postal Service, OPM, the CMS folks who botched the website for the Affordable Care Act, and the folks at Homeland who notified their employees about a theft of security data that took place over a year before, need to get their collective rear ends kicked. As a friend of mine said when Homeland sent him a letter about a 2013 attack on their records, I could be broke right now if it had been a criminal gang!
Never have we had this kind of response to so many incidents. Calling for a "sprint" will not help resolve a long term neglect of government security, documented over and over by IG and public disclosures of incompetence. Hayden wouldn't use that word lightly, if it didn't apply.
No comments:
Post a Comment