The dozens of USD cuts last week have made teams such as product management, design and procurement. Kamens and other sources said Wired said that he was the only person of the USD engineering team that was released. He and others speculate that he was targeted because he was publicly critical in the weeks before the USD was reduced. Doge did not give back a request for comment on his distance.
While all major IT systems have to be protected from hacking threats, Kamens says that the most urgent projects on which he worked on the VA were more controls to limit who could access what information. Both the understanding and the data about a system flow as well as the restriction of access to reduce the risk from the penetration of networks and insider threats, have proven to be important security priorities for every organization.
“My biggest concern that I wanted to obtain in my time with the VA regarding personal health data and personal information, phi and pii, ends up in places where you shouldn’t be,” says Kamens. “And in my opinion, our access control, although it was okay, was not as strong as it should have been, which means that I don’t think we had enough granularity over control, who had access to which data.” He added the leadership to clear up these concerns, which now have a high risk.
The effects of the cuts in VA and the USD cuts, which also affect the agency of the veterans, are still in sight. In addition to the potentially disabled initiatives to improve digital security, reductions can affect the effectiveness and reliability of the currently existing digital protection.
Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and deputy chairman of the Committee of the Senate Court, organized A Virtual press conference On Wednesday with former federal workers from their recently terminated state. One, Raphael Garcia, is a veteran of the disabled army who worked as a management analyst for the VA.
“I coordinated access to the IT system so that every team member had the right tools,” said Garcia during the event. “I managed critical compliance and operational control staff and at the same time maintained constant communication with stakeholders nationwide.” He added that his termination is a personal difficulty, but also a “strong memory that our federal government is reducing its central support system for veterans and endangered communities. “”
Kamenens, who spent his career in front of USD in the private sector, says that he loved the work of the government, and it will be difficult to find another job as worthwhile.
“There were these interviews that we all had to do with the Doge people the day after the inauguration,” he says. “In my asked me to describe what I did at VA, and then said something like: ‘If you do all this work, why don’t you work in the private sector where you can make a lot of money? ‘And I said: “Because I don’t care about the money. I take care of veterans. ‘
“I think the fact that someone asked me this question is really told.”
