Department of Homeland Security discusses own vulnerabilities

On June 20, officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will hold a hearing on Capitol Hill to discuss the agency's apparent problems in staving off electronic attacks and IT systems intrusions. DHS's own CIO, Scott Charbo, and Gregory Wilshusen, director of information security issues at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) are scheduled to present their views in response to requests from Congress to test the agency's IT security defenses. Earlier this year, DHS was asked to conduct a review of its information system security in the wake of news that the departments of commerce and state were successfully hacked during 2006. The hearings will review cybersecurity incidents reported to the DHS Security Operations Center (SOC), such as instances of rootkits, classified leaks, compromised Web sites, bot infections, unauthorized use of networks by contractors, and virus attacks.

For more on this:
- read about it in Inforworld's article