An obscure little State Department agency whose work is called "critical
to the Department's information security posture" has been in a
shambles for years, and is still in chaos, according to FOX NEWS and an audit report
by the department's inspector general released Thursday. The security checks that the agency is supposed to perform and
subsequent approvals for use that it is supposed to bestow every three
years on 36 of those State Department systems have lapsed entirely,
meaning that they are operating, in effect, illegally.
The Office of Information Assurance of the State Department's Bureau of Information Resource Management (IRM/IA) staff apparently has no sense of what security functions their
unit is actually required to perform, has failed for years to update
information security manuals used by thousands of other State Department
personnel, and has often left important details about the
vulnerability of State's information systems where they can be
accessed by people with lower-level security classifications.
The problems and scandals emanating out of Washington these days are systemic, meaning they are very wide-spread, pervasive and either tolerated or directed from the very top. It's fine to poke fun at Obama and his goons, but the fact of the matter is that our national security had been badly damaged and our standing among nations has become a water-cooler joke.
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