I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
An Albuquerque company found security lapses at the problem-plagued Secretary of State’s computer system, reports the Albuquerque Journal.
Of course that’s nothing new. Dan Boyd of the Journal notes that the study, conducted in June, found many of the same inadequacies as a report completed by the Legislative Finance Committee earlier this summer.
Here’s an excerpt of the story:
The LFC evaluation, presented to an interim legislative committee in July, found that the Secretary of State’s Office has outdated software and a dearth of technical capability among its information technology staff and lacks a disaster recovery plan for its most heavily used systems.
The security assessment Boyd writes about was conducted in June. It’s unclear if it’s the same security assessment that was recommended by an internal state technology commission run by the state’s Information Systems chief Marlin Mackey.
The recommendation came this spring as the commission was reviewing the secretary of state’s efforts to create a new campaign finance reporting system.
“As part of that review, we asked when was the last time you have had an external security assessment,” Mackey told the Independent last month. “It was more than a couple of years. We advised them it would be a good idea. If there were any holes… they could close those off before they go live.”
Boyd writes that the security assessment was ordered after the office’s Web site was shut down in June to conduct repairs.
The secretary of state’s Web site and computer systems went offline for several days in June because of still-undisclosed problems, creating problems for the public.
Prior to those problems, the Secretary of State’s Office placed the employee who was working on the new campaign finance reporting system on paid administrative leave. Deputy Secretary of State Don Francisco Trujillo II said in July that the employee, Brad Allen, was being investigated.
Allen has said he has done nothing wrong.
In addition to finding outdated software and a dearth of technical capability among its information technology staff, the June security assessment “found substandard network security and a great risk of “single-point” failure across the system, which includes political campaign reports, lobbyist donations and sensitive financial records,” Boyd writes.
