IG: Energy's classified info network makes a big mistake

The National Nuclear Security Administration spent $150 million to develop a project to improve cybersecurity but it failed, the Energy Department's Inspector General said on Monday.

The report, released by Energy IG Gregory Friedman, said NNSA's Enterprise Security Network's project was three years behind schedule when it became operational earlier this year. It didn't meet the goal of becoming the primary network for sharing classified information at the agency, the IG added.

And the agency made one huge mistake. Managers purchased hardware years before it was necessary, rendering it obsolete by the time the network became operational. The project was originally designed to handle all of NNSA's classified network traffic, but the project was eventually scaled back. And in another big mistake, the network is too small to handle all traffic so the agency must run a separate network infrastructure for its advanced simulation and computing supercomputers.

For more on this catastrophe:
- check out this Government Executive article