As you’ve probably heard lately, networks exploits are increasingly being focused on government agencies and political organizations alike. This makes it more important than ever that software is kept patched and up-to-date.
A couple of examples of how this has impacted government agencies in the past couple of years:
At the time of the March 2014 federal employee database hack, The Office of Personnel Management’s secure web portal was running an outdated application called JRun which was no longer supported by its developer Adobe. This application was part of ColdFusion, which had its source code stolen over a year earlier and was already successfully being used to target other federal agencies. The use of this software is thought by many to be what led to the records of 5% of the adult population of the US being stolen.
In 2015, 330,000 people had their tax forms stolen from the IRS’s website. In this case, faulty software wasn’t the problem – it was a faulty security approach, which was exploited by hackers to generate hundreds of thousands of PIN numbers for individuals. Outdated software is much more likely to have foregone encryption and other high-security techniques, because cybertheft wasn’t as common back when the software was built.
In addition to criminals, government agencies have become the targets of Chinese and Russian government-affiliated cyber-espionage. Because investigative agencies collect information which could harm the reputation of government officials, they are at higher risk than many other government agencies. This makes it more important than ever to keep security up-to-date.
Is your case management software up-to-date? If you haven’t updated your software in several years, it may be time to consider an up-to-date alternative. Give us a call at (919) 600-5102 or email kevin.doepp@wingswept.com to learn more about how our software can help prevent these types of threats.