Labor Dept. Tightens Security for Market-Sensitive Data
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr., NYT
WASHINGTON — On Tuesday morning at precisely 8:30, after a 10-second countdown synchronized to the Naval Observatory’s atomic clock, a Labor Department official will flip a master switch in the agency’s battened-down pressroom and newswire computers will blurt out the monthly Consumer Price Index.
Until that moment, the market-sensitive data will be guarded with launch-code secrecy, a precaution against anyone who might try to take advantage of an accidental or a surreptitious leak to gain an insider’s edge in the financial markets, turning milliseconds into millions.
Yet for all the rituals of high security, government officials have become increasingly nervous that their process is vulnerable, and are now overhauling it.
After a yearlong review that included scrutiny by anti-hacking specialists from Sandia National Laboratories, officials at the Department of Labor revoked the credentials of a few little-known news organizations that appeared to serve financial clients rather than the public at large. The government has also ordered other media groups to replace their computers in the lockup room with new computers under tighter controls.
(More here.)
WASHINGTON — On Tuesday morning at precisely 8:30, after a 10-second countdown synchronized to the Naval Observatory’s atomic clock, a Labor Department official will flip a master switch in the agency’s battened-down pressroom and newswire computers will blurt out the monthly Consumer Price Index.
Until that moment, the market-sensitive data will be guarded with launch-code secrecy, a precaution against anyone who might try to take advantage of an accidental or a surreptitious leak to gain an insider’s edge in the financial markets, turning milliseconds into millions.
Yet for all the rituals of high security, government officials have become increasingly nervous that their process is vulnerable, and are now overhauling it.
After a yearlong review that included scrutiny by anti-hacking specialists from Sandia National Laboratories, officials at the Department of Labor revoked the credentials of a few little-known news organizations that appeared to serve financial clients rather than the public at large. The government has also ordered other media groups to replace their computers in the lockup room with new computers under tighter controls.
(More here.)
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