U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday questioned why the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) continues to suffer from cybersecurity problems despite multiple warnings from government auditors.Members of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee asked government auditors why the VA has not acted on repeated cybersecurity recommendations. The hearing follows the VA’s announcement last month that personal data of 26.5 million U.S. veterans and spouses was stolen from the home of a VA data analyst, who had the information stored on a personal laptop computer and an external hard drive. He was not authorized to take that information home. The VA has said the computer equipment, and not the data, was the target of whoever stole it.Some veterans received notices of the data theft by mail this week, close to six weeks after the May 3 break-in. Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat, called the VA’s response to the data theft “pathetic.”“If it were possible to approach the theft of veterans’ and service members’ records without emotions … this situation might be even an interesting case study of lax policies, failed leadership and organizational arrogance,” Filner said. VA Secretary James Nicholson announced last month he had demoted two agency supervisors who failed to immediately tell him of the data theft. The analyst who took home the data against agency policy will also be fired, Nicholson has said. As recently as last week, the VA has said there’s no indication the stolen information has been used in identity theft schemes.The committee will hear from Nicholson later this month. Auditors with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the VA’s own inspector general’s office said at Wednesday’s hearing that they have no authority to force the VA to comply with their recommendations. In addition, the VA doesn’t give its chief information officer authority to implement the recommendations without approval from three undersecretaries in the agency, said Michael Stale, the VA’s assistant inspector general for audits.“They have a long way to go to mitigate their vulnerabilities and have a comprehensive IT security program,” he said.The GAO has issued multiple reports about VA cybersecurity problems since 2000, and the VA has received a failing grade in four of the past five years on an annual cybersecurity review by the House Government Reform Committee.The agency seems to focus on individual medical centers or regional centers in fixing identified problems, instead of fixing those problems agencywide, Staley said. “The responses we get back to those recommendations is, ‘We’ve taken action at site A,’ ” he said. “Then the next year we … go to site B, and we see the same conditions exist.”Committee Chairman Steve Buyer, an Indiana Republican, asked Staley and GAO auditors who was responsible if VA officials ignored cybersecurity warnings. Auditors are working with the White House Office of Management and Budget to work on cybersecurity problems across the U.S. government, said Linda Koontz, GAO’s director of information management issues.“We need to figure out, what are the lines of authority?” Buyer said. The VA’s decentralized management, with its three divisions largely responsible for their own IT security, has contributed to cybersecurity problems, Buyer said. “VA’s internal controls in data security have been grossly inadequate for years,” he added.-Grant Gross, IDG News Service (Washington Bureau)Related Link: Data Theft at the VA (CSOonline.com)Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content brandpost Sponsored by G42 Understanding the impact of AI on society, environment and economy By Jane Chan Dec 03, 2023 4 mins Artificial Intelligence opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe