Monday, February 14, 2005

Info sharing can be perilous—just ask Energy and DHS

Government Computer News:

It’s a cautionary tale: Five months worth of sensitive federal briefings on terrorism show up on a nongovernment Web site. Supposedly, only government eyes would ever see them.

Agencies must share information to improve homeland security, but the risk of leaks rises as the circle of data users expands. The recent glitch at the Energy Department that led to dozens of sensitive Homeland Security Department documents being posted on a public Internet site illustrates that sharing data comes with serious cybersecurity challenges. ...

Neither Energy nor Homeland Security would release specifics on the incident, but DHS spokeswoman Michelle Petrovich said the problem arose from a special crawl application in the Google search engine that located the data posted on what Energy believed was an internal Web site.


The only thing more dangerous than sharing information is not sharing information.

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