Obama budget expands use of criticized software

President Obama is requesting funding to introduce the government’s main cyber defense system across all .gov sites during 2017, weeks after a federal audit knocked the $6 billion technology as largely ineffective at thwarting hackers.

The president’s budget request includes $471 million to maintain the system and invest in some new capabilities, a slight decrease from the $475.8 million it received for 2016.

{mosads}Included in the request is about $275 million to introduce the software’s threat-detection capabilities across the federal government, allowing civilian agencies to identify digital intruders.

The latest software, known as Einstein 3A, now covers about 1.2 million personnel, or around half of the federal civilian government, according to budget documents.

Critics have long lambasted the Einstein program as outdated and expensive. A recent federal audit bolstered the criticism, dinging the system for only recognizing known hacking threats.

According to the Government Accountability Office report, Einstein is unable to search for unusual network traffic behavior, which is how security experts say advanced software typically detects sophisticated digital assailants.

But officials stress that Einstein has been rolled out in phases and the final phase, Einstein 3A, will soon give the program some of the capabilities that the GAO says it lacks.

The first two phases of Einstein are now fully deployed across the entire government, according to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, allowing officials to detect cybersecurity threats.

Einstein 3A “has the ability to actively block — not just detect — potential cyber attacks,” Johnson said in January.

The funding for Einstein is part of a broad boost in cybersecurity spending sought by the Obama administration.

Overall, the proposal earmarks $19 billion in funding across the government to boost network defenses, a 35 percent increase over last year’s allotment of $14 billion.

Although the overall budget request is already being treated by Republicans as “dead on arrival,” the cybersecurity portion has met with support from some lawmakers.

“A frontline of warfare in the 21st century is computer code,” Senator Angus King (I-Maine) said in a statement. “It’s imperative that we take immediate steps to transform the nation’s outdated cyber-security infrastructure.”