According to recent reports, cybercrime and hacking swamp federal agencies and America is gradually finding it difficult to maintain pace with the international group of hackers.
Due to an increasingly large number of cyber attacks, a $10-a-year effort to safeguard sensitive and secretive US government data, from Social Security numbers to military secrets, is struggling to keep pace and is continuously being undermined by federal employees and contractors. In fact, reports also suggest that workers scattered across more than 11-12 agencies, from education and defence departments to the National Weather Service, are responsible for more than half of the cyerincidents faced by the federal government in the year 2010, as per the Associated Press analysis of records.
Cyber glitches made by the employees
Studies reveal that they have clicked links in useless phishing emails, clicked on malware-laden websites and were also vulnerable in front of the scammers who have successfully got some secret private information. There was an employee who was redirected to a harmful site after he clicked in a video of tennis star, Serena Williams. While a few of the employees act intentionally, most famously, the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, downloaded and leaked out documents that revealed the collection of phone numbers and email records by the government. There was another contractor who lost equipment that consisted of confidential information of millions of Americans, including Robert Curtis, of Monument, Colorado.
String of doubts on the federal government – Slip of duty during a crucial time
2014 is a time when, according to the intelligence officials, cybersecurity is the most effective way of stopping terrorism, which is posing the No.1 threat to the US. During a time when breaches at businesses like Home Depot and target focus attention on data security, the federal government shouldn't take part in publicizing its own data losses. In order to determine the extent of federal cyber attacks, the AP filed a number of Freedom of Information Act requests, interviewed the hackers, the cyber security experts and the other government officials and obtained documents that described digital cracks within the main system.
Fears about breaches there since operations were shifted to computers
A review shows that it has been 40 years and more after the first federal data protection laws has been enacted and the federal government is still struggling to mend the loopholes without their knowledge, the staff and the entire system so that they can easily outwit an ever-evolving enemy. In fact, there were fears about breaches since the late 1960s when the government started shifting its operations onto computers. Although the officials came up with software designed to sniff out all malicious attacks, yet attackers have always found their way of exposing millions of sensitive and private government records.
From 2009-2013, the number of reported breaches on federal computer networks, rose from 26,943 to 46,605, as per reports by the US computer emergency readiness team. Last year, US-CERT responded to about a total number of 228,000 cyber incidents amongst the federal agencies, contract partners and companies that run crucial infrastructure. This is more than double the attacks and incidents that occurred with the federal government.
In a recent discussion, the federal government has agreed to the fact that they will continue to face such human attacks unless there’s education spread all over the workforce. Although the federal government has agreed to spend about $65 billion on some cyber-security contracts between 2015-2020, there are many experts who believe that the effort isn’t going to encounter a growing pool of hackers whose motives will be very different. Hence, we see how the mistakes of the federal employees can lead to such a big glitch over the entire US market. In terms of tracking systems to prevent the hackers there are many companies working hard to discover automatic tracking apps and web services. For instance you may go for TripLog Mileage best of Automatic GPS mileage tracking app.