Key challenges remain for the Homeland Security Department in executing its mission of safeguarding cyberspace, says the Government Accountability Office.

In written testimony due to be delivered Sept. 7 before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro says DHS should lead a "concerted effort to consolidate and better secure Internet connections at federal agencies." The Office of Management and Budget greatly shifted responsibility for federal cybersecurity oversight in April 2010. The Washington Post was handed an advance copy of the testimony and posted it online.

Dodaro also notes that DHS has faced challenges in deployment of its federal network intrusion detection system, Einstein 2. Some of the challenge has been understanding the extent to which Einstein 2 performs as advertised, because DHS "lacked performance measures that addressed whether agencies report whether the alerts represent actual incidents."

Cybersecurity alerts from US CERT have not been consistently actionable or timely, Dodaro adds, and private sector stakeholders continue to be disappointed in their expectations for information sharing.

For more:
- download Dodaro's testimony from the WaPo (.pdf)

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