Land Management agency shuts Web site over security fears

Computerworld - The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency in the U.S. Department of the Interior, has again shut down its Web site because of fears about the security of data inside its IT systems.
Celia Boddington, a spokeswoman for the BLM, confirmed today that the site was turned off April 8 after her agency asked for an internal IT systems audit by the U.S. Inspector General's Office. The audit, which comprised random security tests, "revealed potential weaknesses," according to Boddington.
No systems or data were compromised before the shutdown, which was done as a precaution by the agency to allow changes to be made, she said.
Boddington declined to comment on what kinds of IT security problems were discovered by the audit, nor when the site is expected to go back online. "We're optimistic it will be soon," she said.
The Web site shutdown is the latest of several for the agency since December 2001, when a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit involving a trust fund for American Indians ordered Department of the Interior computers that administer the fund to be shuttered because they were inadequately protected (see story).
The BLM IT systems include information on oil and gas leases on American Indian lands in Western states. Critics have contended for years that the BLM and Department of the Interior IT systems weren't secure enough to maintain the integrity of the data for the leases, which could allow hackers to go in and change data, reducing royalties paid into the American Indian trust funds. The oil and gas production figures in the BLM IT systems correlate to the amount of monies paid to American Indian trust funds overseen by the BLM.
Last December, an appeals court reversed a March 15, 2004, U.S. District Court decision that forced the Department of the Interior to disconnect a substantial number of its computer systems from the Internet because of security concerns (see story).
In March 2002, some of the DOI Web sites went back online after a two-month absence after they were turned off due to security worries related to the trust funds matter (see story).

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