Social Security Defenses to be probed

The Social Security Administration has the personal data of so many people that it can’t be left vulnerable to cyber attacks. A committee will be evaluating the cyber security practices of the agency and reporting the vulnerabilities. This step is taken as a precaution that saves the agency from a breach like the one happened at OPM last year.

Who reported the Social Security Cyber Weaknesses?

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An audit conducted in November last year reported that there were several deficiencies in the agency’s cyber security. After the crucial report, a House Oversight Committee decided to evaluate and examine the cyber security practices followed by the agency.

The Evaluation Process

A key part of the process would be to evaluate and study the results of a penetration testing that was done on the agency recently. As a part of the penetration testing process, the computer systems at the agency were intentionally hacked. The hacking was done to find out the most vulnerable areas in the cyber security so that they can be fixed.

The Letter

The Acting Commissioner Carolyn Colvin received a letter from Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). The letter requested the required information and the deadline for providing the information was set to be May 10, 2016. The letter highlighted the fact that the report offered by the independent auditor, The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report would play a key role in assisting the committee to examine the current security situation for SSA’s information systems.

No Breach

A major relief for the Social Security Administration is that the OIG report has not found any cyber breach as of now. The report did point out that if the breach was existent, it would have had a catastrophic impact.

Highlights of the Report

The OIG report also mentioned that as the Social Security Administration has details of the sensitive information of nearly every person living in the U.S. The unauthorized access and theft of the information can harm millions of Americans. The sensitivity of the information can be found out by remembering the fact that SSA contains details of the medical as well as financial records of nearly every U.S. citizen, dead or alive.

The report also highlighted that the Social Security Administration needs to make protection of information and networks a top priority as it has become imperative now.