NASA Hit By 366% Rise In Cybersecurity Incidents After Budget Cuts
Cybersecurity incidents at NASA rose by 366% last year, according to data collected by virtual network provider AtlasVPN. From a total of 315 in 2018, they rose to 1,469 in 2019, at a time when NASA’s cybersecurity budget declined by $3.1 million over the same period.
Publishing its results today, AtlasVPN extracted and analysed NASA cybersecurity incident data for 2018 and 2019, sourced from the Office of Management and Budget. Of the 366% increase the VPN provider uncovered, it found that incidents related to “improper usage” and lax security practices accounted for 90.5% of the 1,468 increase.
What’s most alarming about AtlasVPN’s findings is not that NASA is one of the United States’ most important federal agencies. Rather, the increase follows a reduction in NASA’s cybersecurity budget across 2019, when the vast majority of major federal agencies saw their corresponding security budgets increase.
Given that foreign states are reportedly trying to attack U.S. agencies, the news that NASA has witnessed increased cyber incidents at a time of reduced budget should ring alarm bells. A cyber-attack in March targeted the Department of Health and Human Service, bombarding its servers with millions of hits, which slowed its system down for several hours.
Another alarming feature of NASA’s cyber-incident data for 2019 is that the vast bulk of incidents relate to “improper usage.” As AtlasVPN writes in the report of its findings, improper usage is “any incident resulting from a violation of an organization’s acceptable usage policies by an authorized user.”