This article discusses the currently poor state of security clearance infrastructure in the US. Short summary: due to security breaches by hackers, Obama administration took away a contract from a company conducting 60% of federal background investigations. In the process of changing who does the investigation (Obama awarded contracts to four new outside providers) , an enormous backlog built up. For a sense of scale:
A congressional hearing held just before the holidays in December provided encouraging evidence that the combination of Obama and Trump reforms now being implemented is starting to show results. The backlog of unclosed investigations fell from over 700,000 at the beginning of 2018 to about 600,000 at year’s end, with that number currently being whittled down at the rate of 3,000-4,000 per week. According to the head of the background investigations bureau, 55,000 requests for investigations are being received each week, but 59,000 are being completed.
Somehow I don’t trust a system with that much volume and that pressure to quickly get through things to maintain high standards. Also the use of all these outside contractors.
Then again, maybe not on these people have truly powerful technological secrets to keep. Maybe there are better processes in those cases and more thorough background checks, etc., are done.
(Originally posted by Ruby)
This article discusses the currently poor state of security clearance infrastructure in the US. Short summary: due to security breaches by hackers, Obama administration took away a contract from a company conducting 60% of federal background investigations. In the process of changing who does the investigation (Obama awarded contracts to four new outside providers) , an enormous backlog built up. For a sense of scale:
Somehow I don’t trust a system with that much volume and that pressure to quickly get through things to maintain high standards. Also the use of all these outside contractors.
Then again, maybe not on these people have truly powerful technological secrets to keep. Maybe there are better processes in those cases and more thorough background checks, etc., are done.
(Originally posted by Ruby)
Changes related to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach