Government’s Auditor Passes Own IT Audit
Svetlana Dikhtyareva/Shutterstock.com
By
Joseph Marks
The Government Accountability Office is properly wiping its defunct electronics of sensitive data, an inspector general review finds.
The government auditor that has savaged the Internal Revenue Service, the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies for poor information security practices passed its own review with flying colors today.
The review by the Government Accountability Office’s inspector general focused on GAO’s procedures to wipe sensitive data off defunct laptops, smartphones and other devices before disposing of them.
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After reviewing policies, interviewing staff and inspecting trashed laptops and BlackBerrys, the inspector general found no chinks in the government auditors’ armor. The IG made no recommendations.
The audit comes as GAO is replacing roughly 450 BlackBerrys with iPhones and retiring several thousand outdated employee laptops, the report states. During the laptop upgrade process, GAO stored the outdated laptops hard drives in a guarded room, then disabled each hard drive individually by exposing it to a strong magnetic field, the report states.