Information Security: Serious and Widespread Weaknesses Persist at Federal Agencies

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed inspectors' general information security audit findings for 24 federal agencies, focusing on: (1) information security weaknesses identified in audit reports issued from July 1999 through August 2000 and GAO's findings with similar information that GAO reported in September 1998; (2) weaknesses and the related risks at selected individual agencies; and (3) the most significant types of weaknesses in each of six categories of general controls that GAO used in its analysis.