WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th September, 2020) The National Aeronautics and Space Agency's (NASA) cybersecurity programs fall far below Federal requirements even as challenges to them grow from both domestic and foreign sources, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin said in a congressional hearing on Friday.
"The agency s IT [Information Technology] practices continue to fall short of federal requirements. In 2019 its performance review remained at level two out of five," Martin told the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Martin explained that NASA had struggled to implement an across-the-agency IT security policy to counter cyber threats for more than two decades.
"Three thousand web domains offer cyber criminals a larger target than most federal agencies [provide]," he said.
However, the efforts of successive Chief Information Officers who recognized the dangers had been in significant part frustrated because of the decentralized structure of the agency with key facilities scattered all over the United States, all enjoying considerable autonomy in their IT and cyber practices, Martin added.
