It is no secret that the U.S. government is grappling with cybersecurity issues across its organizations and agencies. The good news is that the government has an auditing agency that investigates possible weaknesses or cybersecurity gaps and makes key recommendations to rectify problems: the U.S. Government Accountability Office, known as GAO.
“We are starting to see people in government taking the issues more seriously,” says Nick Marinos, a director in the GAO’s Information Technology and Cybersecurity Office. “But in other ways, we are behind the eight ball. Adversaries are advantaged by the fact of the automated ways by which they can attack. They can keep trying and bombarding federal networks. In many ways, there’s little time for the agencies to take a deep breath and realize from a strategic perspective the measures that could help protect their networks.”
In the GAO’s Information Technology and Cybersecurity Office, Marinos and five other executives lead a team of about 170 auditors conducting dozens of audits at a time, primarily involving cybersecurity, information technology management, privacy and data protection issues.
The vast majority of the…
