Lawmakers grill Charbo on DHS cybersecurity breaches

BY Wade-Hahn Chan
Published on June 21, 2007

Related Links
House committee keeps pressing DHS on cybersecurity

Lawmakers to DHS: Have your networks been breached?

Fed up with mounting cybersecurity breaches at the Homeland Security Department, lawmakers brought their frustrations to bear on DHS Chief Information Officer Scott Charbo in a hearing June 20, accusing him of misspending his budget and not doing his job.

DHS reported that 844 cybersecurity-related incidents occurred in fiscal 2005 and 2006. Incidents involved workstations infected with Trojan viruses, unauthorized access to secure systems and misconfigured firewalls.

The Government Accountability Office also reported that investigators were unable to fully assess whether DHS databases — such as those used in the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program — had been breached because no evaluation tools were in place.

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity and Science and Technology Subcommittee accused Charbo of not taking his job seriously and the agency of failing to set an example of good information technology security.

“I am not convinced that [Charbo] is serious about fixing the vulnerabilities in our systems,â€