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Office of Management and Budget
News Release

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 13, 2002
2002-05

OMB Issues First Annual Report on Federal Information
Technology Security

Washington, DC -- The Office of Management and Budget released today the first annual report to Congress on the state of Information Technology (IT) security at the twenty-four largest federal departments and agencies. The report, mandated under the Government Information Security Reform Act of 2000, requires all federal agencies to conduct annual security reviews and report the results to OMB.

 

The report reflects the findings of agencies’ CIOs and Inspectors General’s offices as of September 2001. The collected information focuses on overall program performance and not complex technologies. Mark Forman, OMB’s Associate Director for Information Technology and Electronic Government said, "OMB has taken an integrated approach to ensure security issues are addressed and this report is a benchmark against which OMB and the agencies can monitor performance improvements."

 

The report identifies six common weaknesses in program performance and describes the actions both OMB and the agencies are implementing to improve IT security. Agencies are required to: 1) increase senior management attention to security; 2) establish security performance measures for agency managers; 3) improve security education and awareness; 4) integrate security into agency capital planning and investment control processes; 5) improve the security of contractor services; and 6) improve their ability to detect attacks and share that information with other agencies.

 

The report also highlights IT security spending by the federal government. For FY 2002, the federal government will spend $2.7 billion on IT security, and OMB estimates IT security investments for FY 2003 will increase to $4.2 billion.

 

The report is located on OMB’s Website at www.omb.gov/inforeg/infopoltech.pdf (1,079k)

 

 

 

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