US government agencies could have saved themselves a lot of embarrassment if they had used the encryption technology they had paid for.

The Government Accountability Office said that of 24 major federal agencies, 70 per cent had not yet installed encryption software on laptops or hand-held mobile computers where such security technology could do the most good. Six agencies that had employed encryption implemented it so badly that they may as well not have bothered.

Government regulations do not require its agencies to deploy encryption to keep data secure, but the GAO said that federal agencies were responsible for safeguarding it in the best ways possible, and that if they had the technology they should be using it.

The 24 major federal agencies named and shamed included the Agency for International Development; the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, the Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs; the Environmental Protection Agency; the General Services Administration; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; the National Science Foundation; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; the Office of Personnel Management; the Small Business Administration; and the Social Security Administration. X

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