WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- Pentagon computer networks are not properly backed up and a failure could cause a "stoppage of war-fighting operations," its inspector general says.
The Defense Department also provided "erroneous information" to Congress and the Office of Management and Budget about whether it "had contingency planning procedures in place and periodically tested the procedures necessary to recover the systems from an unforeseen, and possibly devastating, event."
The inspector general audited contingency plans for Defense Department networks "to continue operations during a disruptive or catastrophic event."
Plans are supposed to be stored by the Defense Department's Information Technology Portfolio Repository.
But the audit found that "The information in DITPR on contingency planning is not reliable."
Investigators estimated that 61 percent of mission-critical systems "lacked a contingency plan or their owners could not provide evidence of a plan," and that 82 percent had contingency plans "that had not been tested or for which their owners could not provide evidence of testing."
"As a result," reads their report, quietly posted on the Web last week, Defense Department mission-critical systems "may not be able to sustain war-fighter operations during a disruptive or catastrophic event."
