Members of Congress are being investigated for possible ethics violations, and the names of those individuals under investigation were leaked when a junior staff member, working from home, improperly placed a document listing all the continuing inquiries into a file-sharing software system to which people outside the committee had access. The staff member, whose name was not released, has been fired, and committee officials said Thursday that they did not know who had gained improper access to the document.
This latest episode of security breaches highlights that organizations, and the government in particular, are not properly (or adequately) addressing the cyber-security epidemic facing our nation. It’s not about technology, but people and processes. Ask and security professional, and they will tell you that the technology works. The problem is the "people" factor. On a whole, most people do not understand what is an acceptable level of behavior when dealing with mission-critical information. There is no amount of investment in technology, or compliance auditing, that will equal the investment an organization, or government, can make in sound data governance policies and practices.
To read more about the latest security breach, please click here: Ethics Inquiries into Lawmakers Surfaces Via Security Breach