GAO is adamant that it "made hundreds of recommendations to agencies to address deficiencies in their information security controls and weaknesses in their programs" in the past. Unfortunately, the agencies were yet to implement those pointers by the time they were audited. Senator Tom Carper told The Hill, however, that the audits happened before the agencies could execute the changes required by the Federal Information Security Act and the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act.

The results of this audit make it clearer why Homeland Security recently signed a lucrative contract with Raytheon recently to help federal agencies secure their networks and fend of cyberattacks. In addition, the Pentagon is working on an automated system that can detect unauthorized access before hackers can steal top secret info or do irreversible damage.

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