Opportunities Exist for SEC to Improve Its Controls over Financial Systems and Data
. In carrying out its mission, the SEC relies on computerized information systems to collect, process, and store sensitive information, including financial data. Having effective information security controls ... The SEC is responsible for enforcing securities laws, issuing rules and regulations that provide protection for investors, and helping to ensure that the securities markets are fair and honest ... in place is essential to protecting these systems and the information they contain. <br/> This report details weaknesses GAO identified in the information security program at SEC during its audit ... IT security basics under scrutiny ... Financial audit by US GAO was accompanied by an IT examination focused on information security measures in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). GAO found that SEC’s systems could ... be compromised, because of risks jeopardizing the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive financial information.
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Submission of data to national databases in municipalities, towns and cities
must be clearly financed from the state budget. It was also assessed whether the measures taken by database managers have been sufficient to guarantee that local authorities submit all required data ... and that these data are correct. ... The National Audit Office analysed the activities of the database managers following a ruling made by the Supreme Court in 2010, which stated that the public functions assigned to local authorities ... ... Funds as basic factor of data processing ... The NAO of Estonia audited the activities of state agencies in the management of the database selected for the audit, to which local authorities are obliged to submit data. It was found that in most ... cases the state does not compensate the costs of data submission for local governments.
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Report to the Public AccountsCommittee on mitigation of cyber attacks
of attacks: - technical restriction of download of programmes; - limited use of local administrators; - systematic software updates. Rigsrevisionen has assessed whether the government bodies in the study ... This report concerns the action taken by Danish government bodies to prevent cyber attacks. Behaving sensibly in cyberspace to avoid attacks is important, but should be supplemented by technical ... security controls that can increase security and mitigate cyber attacks. International studies have concluded that three central security controls can prevent the majority of the currently known types ... Three basic security measures are often neglected ... . limited use of local administrators rights; 3. systematic software updates. ... Government agencies are open for cyber attacks because they often forget to respect three basic IT security measures. The three measures are: 1. technical restriction on programs downloading; 2
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Report on the government’s processing of confidential data on persons and companies
Rigsrevisionen has examined how eight government institutions process confidential data on persons and companies in 11 selected IT systems. The report is based on IT audits carried out in connection ... with the annual audit in the spring 2014. The purpose of the audit was to assess whether confidential data on persons and companies are adequately protected by the government institutions. ... ... Inadequate protection of confidential data ... If a government institution does not protect confidential data to the extent necessary, the risk that third parties get unauthorized access to the data is very high. In opinion of the Danish SAI ... , inadequate protection of confidential data may also erode the citizens’ and companies’ confidence in government data security. That may eventually become a barrier for the continued efforts to implement ... e-government and make government administration more efficient.
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Management and protection of assets in the field of the information-communication technologies at the ME SR
internal and security directives, unidentified critical and strategic Information Systems (IS), absolutely unsatisfying principles, procedures, conditions and policy relating to the data backuping (and ... control of backup's functionality), restoring and security, possibility of unauthorised persons to access the IS and data, which increases the risk of information leakage and security risk, and inadequate ... The Supreme Audit office of the Slovak Republic (SAO SR) has conducted the audit at the Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic (ME SR) for the audit period 2011 and 2012 to examine ... ... Started from contracting, ended in security ... The perceptive and filled with findings audit - conducted by the Slovak SAI - discovered the list of issues which started in careless contracting procedures, failure to update the development concept ... and ended in exposing the organization to high security risks.
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Management of Police Information Resources
Police tasks of the necessary data are processed departmental registers, information systems, automated data processing systems and networks where information is stored, processed and transferred ... , monitoring, evaluation and coordination and other aspects of registers and IS strategic management. The audited period was 2012-2014. For the analysis, there were used previous data and data of 2015 ... to the classified information. The police department has all of these information resources, so the audit focused on the activities and actions of the Department to ensure planning and organizing of the recourses ... ... Fundamentals of IT organisation ... Review by SAI Lithuania makes readers aware that nowadays it is difficult to develop a larger IT system without whole conceptual infrastracture: planning composed into strategy of the organisation ... and well understood architecture of information. Well functioning IT management structures, which on the other hand may sound trivial, were proved here as the key to success.
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Management of Information Resources of the Ministry of Agriculture
The Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania has managed 32 information systems and registers. Of these, 24 ones are managed, developed and upgraded by a state enterprise subordinate ... to the Ministry of Agriculture, the Agricultural Information and Rural Business Centre. The annual amount allocated by the Ministry for the maintenance of the Centre totals LTL 17.5 million on average ... . The objective of the audit was to assess the general and development controls of the information resources of the Ministry of Agriculture. The audit was conducted at the Ministry of Agriculture and the state ... ... Without appropiate IT management  it is hard to achieve reliable, consistent and secure systems for agriculture ... Since 1996 the Ministry has been using information systems of varying complexity for collecting and processing data, including personal data. The Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania ... has managed 32 information systems and registers. SAI of Lithuania revealed that systems were not well mantained what affected use of funds devoted to the systemsand also their legality and security.
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Management of Information Resources of the Ministry of the Interior
management. Their impact is important not only because the Ministry manages 16 information resources, which ensure data availability to the population, efficient activity of the services, and operation ... of 2016. For data analysis, data from other periods was used. The audit was conducted in the Ministry of the Interior. We also collected information at the Information Technology and Communications ... Department and State Enterprise Regitra which are responsible for administration of the information resources managed by the Ministry as well as data security and development. ... ... Process maturity examination can help in IT audit ... Main risk areas in case of this audit were strategic and organisational - Ministry’s weak ownership of IT resources, insufficient audit and internal control function. SAI Lithuania auditors found ... also flaws in change management and security processes. But the finding, which gave them the key to the root cause of problems, was connected with maturity assessment of the auditee's IT processes.
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General and Creation Control of the Information Systems of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The objective of the audit was to assess general and creation control of the information systems of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since the beginning of 2009, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has ... achieved considerable progress in the management of the information systems. The auditors reviewed and assessed all key elements of the process. ... Overview of problems - area by area ... SAI Lithuania looked into all critical elements of a Ministry's information system, starting from IT architecture, through information security to automation of data processing.
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IT security in the Federal Administration
The SFAO has audited the Admin PKI – the basic infrastructure and offering for the issuing of digital certificates – within the Federal Office of Information Technology, Systems and Telecommunication ... (FOITT). The examination concentrated on assessing the development and current operation as well as future prospects. Admin PKI refers to all processes and the hardware and software needed for issuing ... certificates of different grades. ... Technical and organizational deficiencies work together against data security ... Only minor deficiencies were revealed in the Windows environment but only in case of Microsoft products.Providers' lack of both assertiveness and synergy adds to 'the great unknown' of authonomous ... entities' networks.
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