Audit: DHS Cyber Defense Fails to Detect 94 Percent of Hacks

Apr 10

According to a sanitized version of a secret federal audit, the firewalls operated by the Department of Homeland Security, meant to detect and prevent nation-state attacks, are completely ineffective. The audit found the federal government’s primary perimeter defense system, known as EINSTEIN, depends only on known patterns of attack (signature detection) to spot suspicious traffic and fails to detect 94 percent of commonly known vulnerabilities — or even check web traffic for malicious content.

In addition, the audit discovered that the prevention feature of the system is only deployed at five of the 23 major nondefense agencies, one of which was the Office of Personnel Management.

Read Complete Article