Cummings Issues Statement on New

Interior IG Report on Cybersecurity Threats

Washington, D.C. (Mar. 14, 2018)—Today, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, issued the following statement in response to a new report issued by the  Department of the Interior Inspector General regarding cybersecurity challenges:

“Today’s report highlights the need for Secretary Zinke to move much more urgently to address cybersecurity challenges at his Department.  These failures are symptomatic of a much broader problem—President Trump just proposed slashing funding for agency IT programs from about $51 billion in 2016 to about $46 billion for 2019.  Our country faces an increasing number of sophisticated cyberattacks, so it is critical that the federal government increase the funding and investments we need to secure our IT systems at both our defense and civilian agencies.”

The IG report found that the Department:

• “was not fully prepared to respond to incidents” after the IG conducted multiple simulated attacks;

• “did not promptly detect or fully analyze security incidents” in response to these simulated attacks;

•  “did not fully contain or completely eradicate active cyber threats;”

• “did not continuously improve its incident response capabilities by learning from prior accidents”; and

• has “not evolved to address today’s often sophisticated cyber threats.”