The Homeland Security Department is going into agency networks to find the soft spots-places where cybersecurity defenses are weakest and pose the greatest risks.
DHS’ Federal Network Security branch, under the National Protection and Programs Directorate, is having little trouble finding agencies’ soft cyber underbelly.
Take one agency who asked DHS to perform a “Red Team” exercise, it thought it had 2,000 to 3,000 computers on a specific network, but Homeland Security’s team stopped counting at 9,000. Rob Karas, the program manager of the risk evaluation program, or Red Teaming initiative, at DHS, said until the agency understood its network better it wasn’t worth continuing.
