From: The Washington Post
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In a letter sent Tuesday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the lawmakers pointed to recent reports showing the department lagged behind other federal agencies in safeguarding itself from cyberthreats. They specifically called on the State Department to roll out multi-factor authentication, or MFA, across its networks, saying a “password-only approach is no longer sufficient to protect sensitive information from sophisticated phishing attempts and other forms of credential theft.”
“Two-factor authentication is cybersecurity 101,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the letter’s authors, told me in an email. “Effective diplomacy depends on being able to keep certain things secret from other governments, especially during sensitive negotiations. If State can’t secure their emails from hackers, it will undermine their ability to function as the foreign policy arm of the U.S. government.”
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