US Homeland Security is so secure even its own staff can't log in US Department of Homeland Security staff returning to work on Tuesday after the Presidents' Day holiday have apparently had a tough time getting computer systems to function. DHS staff say they weren't able to log into computer systems at their offices in Washington DC, when clocking on this morning. Staff in at least four …
Are you sure? I have reason to believe they are all using some form of outside communication *cough* confide/signal/twitter/weibo/myspace/facebark *cough*, even for government business. Not to mention their phones, voices, signal flags and aldis lamps are probably still in working condition. Still, don't let that keep you from buying the excuses!
I work for a court. My wife works for a state agency. All the computers in both are screwed up and there isn't any likelihood of that changing anytime soon. And the feds are no better - the IRS just told us both we have to report to them IN PERSON. Why? Are we being audited? Nope. Are we criminals, terrorists, etc? Nope. Their computer made an error, or so they say.
AC for obvious reasons. My next post to El Reg may be made from Gitmo. Not because we actually DID anything, understand. Just because "computer error."
I know the Nazis used Hollerith machines to better track and murder Jews. I'm just wondering what would have happened if they'd actually had computers like we do today. Would they have taken over the world? Or would Poland have crushed Germany in 1939 and ended WW II? If the Nazis had programmers of the same caliber as our government programmers, my money would be on Poland.
I have been in IT consulting for 25+ years. I have worked at Fortune 50 companies, mom-n-pop companies, several different State's agencies and the Federal government. Other than the scale they operate at I have seen no difference between government and private IT. They are all generally poorly managed by people who do not understand security at all & many with only rudimentary understandings of IT. Once the organization is sufficiently large enough shit happens a lot more often and is dealt with a lot less efficiently.
USB cards and Win10 running PCs?
Inquiring minds want to know, as soon as someone can log in of course.
This is an OPM grade f**k up.
TBH I suppose you can't expect too much from an agency that's stitched together from 22 separate organizations.
Although after 15 years you think they might have bedded down by now.
Long weekends are used by federal government IT departments to implement updates, security patches, and the like. They never work properly on the first go round. Typically the wait time for help desk calls is monumental after these weekend updates. This happens at most/all government agencies. The only reason this made the news is that DHS's phones were still working. Usually that system goes TU in sync with the computers because it's VOIP. The best part of this chaos is the inability to have power point laden meetings. BTW at the beginning of these events the obligatory email is sent out stating that the email system is down. You get it as the system recovers. Most of the working stiffs have learned to bring a private cell phone so they can play vid games & chat while everything gets sorted.
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