Federal cyber panic: fake scare, blown budget.

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: Citings - Brief article

What happens when a techinept federal agency panics over a potential cyber threat? A yearlong saga of waste and overreaction at the Economic Development Administration provides a sad illustration.

The agency, a subdivision of the Commerce Department tasked with promoting innovation and economic competitiveness, blew half its information technology budget last year fighting phantom attacks, cut off staff from basic communications systems such as email, and unnecessarily destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of computer equipment that not only wasn't infected but almost certainly couldn't have been infected--stopping only when the agency ran out of funding to destroy equipment, according to a Commerce Department inspector general's report released in June.

After an internal report indicated that malware had infected hundreds of computer systems, the agency began a massive campaign of technological destruction, tossing out an estimated 8170,000 worth of computers and related equipment, including mice, on the fear that a...