Saturday, September 20, 2014
Healthcare.gov Security Risks
An independent panel reported that there are more than 20 security flaws on the government run website healthcare.gov. This panel advised that the government took huge risks by going live when it did by not being fully tested, as well as failing to provide consistent maintenance on the site (i.e. patches). This is particularly concerning to me as this site has full record of millions of American's personal data; income and Social Security number included. Without getting in to the politics that surround this initiative, I think it certainly is in the governments best interest to ensure all patching is up to date and the data they collect is as secure as it reasonably can be; it does not appear that they have done a very good job so far. Should this be a surprise considering the amount of data that Snowden was able to walk out with? Perhaps not.
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The sad part of the matter is that the designers of the Healthcare.gov website knew ahead of time that there were many security vulnerabilities in their product, but chose to proceed anyway against this knowledge. The better approach would have been to get it right the first time instead of having to conduct surgery on the patient without being offered even an aspirin.
ReplyDeleteDuane K. - CIS 608
I was flabbergasted when this news hit after the site went live. To find out there had been concerns about the actual live site not being tested, yet management decided to push anyway. If it was a private sector, that is one company I would not want to work for!
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