White Papers for Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)

Technology, People and Insider Threats

Vericept

The insider threat is one of the biggest threats to the security and stability of the nation and no where is this truer than inside the federal government.

More alarming, not a great deal seems to have changed in the last several years to prevent insider threats. In the past, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found “national security weaknesses in the 24 largest U.S.government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Defense Department, putting critical government operations and data at great risk of fraud, misuse and disruption.”

During the last few months there have been alarming disclosures of millions of confidential files disappearing and breaches in data protection and lax security seems to be a problem facing many federal
agencies and departments. In May, the Department of Veterans Affairs admitted that personal information
on 26.5 million veterans, including 2.2 million active duty members of the military, had been compromised. The information was on the hard drive of a laptop stolen from the home of a VA employee.

Veterans Affairs officials later told Congress that the employee had been taking home sensitive data in
breach of department policy for three years.

View the White Paper

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