Major establishment press outlets ignored Friday's news that "Teresa Fryer, the chief information security officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ... explicitly recommended denial of the website’s Authority to Operate (ATO), but was overruled by her superiors." Fryer also "refused to put her name on a letter recommending a temporary ATO be granted for six months" In other words, HealthCare.gov should not have launched.
Brian Fung at the Washington Post's "The Switch" blog didn't consider the idea that HC.gov shouldn't even have gone live the most important story element. While failing to disclose Fryer's no-go recommendation and refusal to go along, he and his post's headline instead obsessed over whether Republican Congressman and House Oversight Committee chair Darrell Issa might "release files" that "could aid hackers." It wouldn't be a surprise to learn that hackers already have them, or at least have figured out how to work with or around them. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine):
These HealthCare.gov files could aid hackers. And Darrell Issa may release them.
Significant security vulnerabilities are still being uncovered in the Obama administration's health-insurance Web site, nearly three months after the launch of HealthCare.gov.
Officials discovered two such vulnerabilities, known as "high findings," within the last month, including one this week, Teresa Fryer, the chief information security officer for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the House Oversight Committee this week in an interview. Fryer said that both issues were being addressed.
The debate over the security of HealthCare.gov has raised questions about whether similar vulnerabilities exist in systems across the federal government. Because the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and other agencies communicate with HealthCare.gov, security gaps in those agencies could, if discovered, allow hackers to penetrate their systems and indirectly compromise the functioning of the new health-care law, according to outside security experts.
... While software vulnerabilities in Healthcare.gov have been documented, the potential risk stemming from the site’s interconnection with other federal systems has not. Officials from the White House, the Health and Human Services Department and others did not answer questions posed by The Washington Post about whether serious vulnerabilities exist in other federal IT systems linked to HealthCare.gov.
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