On Thursday US Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman stated that Linton Brooks, the head of the U.S. Nuclear Security Agency had been forced to resign due to serious management and security issues. The recent security lapse at Los Alamos where USB thumb drives full of top secret nuclear data were recovered from a suspected meth lab, was listed as the primary factor for the forced resignation.
In June Brooks was reprimanded for not reporting to Bodman regarding the theft of computer files at an NNSA facility in Albuquerque, N.M., which contained Social Security numbers and other data for 1,500 workers.
Then in October classified weapons-related documents on USB thumb drives from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico were found during a drug raid in the home of a woman who had worked at the lab.
The agency was particluarly troubled by the recent Los Alamos theft, as tens of millions of tax dollars were recently invested to beef up “cyber security” at the lab. Apparently endpoint security was not a top priority, Apparently the majority of that money went into securing the network perimeter and none of it went into securing the endpoint.
Even after the Los Alamos scare, their solution was to Super Glue the USB ports…! Apparently this was not viewed as Linton’s best decision and probably played a key role in his forced resignation
http://www.watchyourend.com/2007/01/13/us-nuke-security-chief-forced-to-resign-over-los-alamos-usb-drive-security-breach