The agency has taken steps such as storing devices to be destroyed in a location with heightened physical security controls. Image: Kristi Blokhin/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe Federal Housing Finance Agency has partially improved its controls over disposal of electronic media—an issue common across federal agencies—in response to concerns raised in a 2020 inspector general report, according to a follow-up audit by the IG.
In the earlier report, the IG reviewed the handling of mobile devices, hard disk drives, removable media drives and other storage media containing agency information that had reached the end of its service life. It found, though, that the process “did not ensure accountability” and left a risk that information on the devices could be exposed.
Specifically, it found that the agency did not sanitize the retired electronic media prior to disposal, as required both by its own procedures and by NIST standards and that the FHFA could not reconcile the number of items it had approved for disposal with the number of assets the agency’s contractor actually collected for disposal.
The new report said that in response, the agency has taken steps such as storing devices to be destroyed in a location with heightened physical security controls. However, at the time of the follow-up audit the FHFA still “did not consistently perform inventories of its retired electronic media and did not reconcile discrepancies in its inventory records.” The agency said that it plans to have new inventory control guidance in place by June 30.
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