[throwaway481048]

Breaking: U.S. government is inept at carrying out procedures which are standard in the technology industry, including the proper safeguarding of important tools & data, despite a budget larger than any other entity on earth.

Not Breaking: Citizens’ disappointment in the aforementioned, particularly given their direct contribution to said budget.

The Unsaid: Much of this will not change, unless incentives are realigned.

[Jweb_Guru]

> Breaking: U.S. government is inept at carrying out procedures which are standard in the technology industry, including the proper safeguarding of important tools & data, despite a budget larger than any other entity on earth.

I'm not sure what technology industry you are in, but in the one I'm in software engineers are fooled by phishing attacks extremely consistently, people routinely expose critical systems and devices to the internet, developers often expose databases with insecure defaults to the internet over well-known ports, customer data gets stolen on a regular basis, etc., etc., etc. Regardless of how one feels about the government, I don't think the average technology company does any better when it comes to securing its own infrastructure.

[throwaway3699]

Basic security practices like 2FA and not using VPNs/trusting the network would be a great start. There is no excuse for private business like Facebook and Google being more secure than the f*@& United States of America.

[slenk]

Well, to be fair, the government doesn't control the pipeline...

[chrisco255]

Well, FB, Google, et al. have sucked up all the talent.

[slongfield]

The NSA and CIA pay less than half of what a FAANG company pays for the same role.

Sources: FAANG: Levels.fyi and personal experience

NSA/CIA: https://work.chron.com/nsa-pay-scale-16399.html and https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...

[chrisco255]

For sure, and worse because there's no stock grants that subsequently go up several times in value after distribution. I get that it's a compensation problem as well as a supply problem: software engineering talent is hard to come by and world class software security talent is even harder to come by.

[okaram]

How is the US government inept? This is a private company sucking ...

[knowaveragejoe]

Er, the victim here is a private company, not the government.

[SvenMarquardt]

When 45% of the East Coast's supply of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel is impacted, the government has a problem.

[Pfhreak]

Yes, the problem is "How quickly can we nationalize this company."