Government Agencies Reported Record Number of Data Breaches in 2012

Well what have we here ?

A report from the GAO (Government Accountability Office) just published says that, *get this*, more than 22,000 data breach "incidents" happened on government agencies' computers in 2012 !!

Way up from the more than 15,000 "reported" in 2011.

The IRS and CMS accounted for around half of these things. (CMS is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, part of HHS)

Just what *ARE* these clowns doing anyway?

You would think these experts could at least do something for the incredible money they get paid.

Could there be criminals in the government ?

Government Agencies Reported Record Number of Data Breaches in 2012

The federal government had a record number of data breaches in 2012, revealing sensitive personal information of its employees across multiple agencies, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

A total of 22,156 incidents, caused by nefarious cyber attacks, or inadvertent exposures by agency employees, occurred in 2012, according to a new GAO report on information security released on Wednesday.

The report comes as the launch of Healthcare.gov has raised concerns over the privacy of Americans personal information using the government website, which lacks fundamental security safeguards and is vulnerable to attack.

and apparently it continues unabated !!

The GAO said security breaches into federal agencies “continue to occur on a regular basis.” ........

... The CMS reported 4,172 incidents in FY 2012, second to only the Department of Veterans Affairs, which had 6,627. The IRS ranked third for most breaches, with 3,696. Together, CMS and the IRS accounted for nearly half of the 15,140 breaches reported by the eight agencies alone.

Big Government = Big Mistakes

Big Government = Big Boondoggles

Big Government = Big Money into Big pockets

For the Daring

reply to post by xuenchen


Ah, I see blaming the chickens for the fox attacking the hen roost. Nice! As someone with an IT background, I can attest to the difficulty of dealing with a constantly changing cyber war. There are so many attacks on US gov systems, both foreign and domestic, that I'm not surprised by these numbers.

I know many US gov employees are great people who take an extreme pay cut to come in from the private sector just to serve their country. No hidden motives, no nefarious intentions. Posts like the one above, where the OP blames the victim over the criminals are sickening.

It's not really that hard to be believe.

Infosec standards and reporting in general have received more attention.

Internet connectivity continues to grow.

Any script kiddie can grab the latest version of Nessus, NMAP, Kismet if WIFI is your play field, insert some other tool here and hit someone with a DDoS then follow it up with lame "expect us" threats and get the support of people. It's about a billion times easier now to exploit anything data or voice then it ever was. Hell I used to make so much money boxing for people now their just isn't a point and the risk isn't worth it as my career depends on it.

reply to post by xuenchen


If its something that happens all the time then why does it take 2 years for this info to come out?

22,000 sounds a bit low to me.

Supposedly anonymoose has feet down in many branches of government, definitely in murrica and probably many other countries as well. People are fed up. Governments every where are getting messed up by skiddies to top-notch security analysts left and right.

If everyone working for government magically one day sprouted a conscious like the hackers etc. they would halt everything and bring the system to a screeching halt.

b3l13v3
If everyone working for government magically one day sprouted a conscious like the hackers etc. they would halt everything and bring the system to a screeching halt.

Good thing their aren't black, white and gray hat hackers ..
"a conscious like hackers"
I bet you have the Matrix feed for you background also right?

I have dealt with so many people with a lack of conscious over the past 20 years and it would take you all of about 10 seconds browsing the deep web to find out how unethical most of those people are. Just because someone decides they are judge, jury and executioner doesn't mean they have a conscious.

reply to post by opethPA


So we shouldn't have more Bradley Mannings and Edward Snowdens, I take it? And just because there's a bunch of bad stuff on the deep web doesn't mean the deep web is inherently bad itself - it attempts to provide means of anonymous information, but I suppose we should all have RFID chips that track our every move, thought and activities right? If you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide, yeah?

I'd much rather watch the entire world wide government infrastructure burn to the ground than continue this pitiful excuse of governance. I'm sorry, but someone needs to axe the rich power hungry corporate assholes and take their wealth and use it to stop destructive operations such as oil/fracking and end world hunger as well as help support a clean new earth and I personally cannot think of anyone more capable of doing that then some hackers with a good conscience.

And yet, for all the touted high tech capabilities of GCHQ and the NSA, they have yet to bring any serial spammer, hacker or cyber criminal to justice! Of course, they are not geared up for that sort of work, catching criminals, but spend all their time spying on what we are posting, talking about, what we do, where we go etc.