The Homeland Security agency charged with protecting U.S. airline and train passengers is significantly deficient in protecting its sensitive information systems from cybersecurity attacks that are becoming a growing threat across the globe, the department’s internal watchdog warns in a stinging new report.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was found deficient in 8 of 10 categories, incapable of ensuring “it will be able to quickly detect, respond to, and recover from a cyberattack,” Homeland’s inspector general declared in a report released this week ahead of one of the busiest travel weekends of the year with the Labor Day holiday.
In 2015, in response to increasing cyber threats, the Office of Management and Budget created the High Value Asset (HVA) security initiative tasking federal agencies with identifying their most important assets. These assets include “federal information systems, information, and data for which unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction could cause a significant impact to national security interests, foreign relations, the economy, safety, and the security of the American people.”
