ACA Health Exchange Contractors Have History of Security Failures

Lucas123 writes "Two of the contractors involved in developing online health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, which have been plagued by technical problems since launching this month, have had serious data security issues in the past. Quality Software Services developed the software for the Affordable Care Act's data services hub and oversaw development of tools to connect the hub to the databases of other federal agencies. Last June, an audit report by the Health and Human Services Inspector General found QSS failed to adhere to federal security standards (PDF) in delivering IT testing services for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Additionally, services firm Serco suffered a major security breach in 2012. Serco won a five-year $1.3 billion contract to process and verify paper applications for health insurance via the online exchanges. Serco's breach exposed sensitive data of more than 123,000 members of the Thrift Savings Plan, a $313 billion retirement plan run by the U.S. Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. The exposed data included full names, addresses, Social Security Numbers, financial account information, and bank routing information."

Comments

Re:SURPRISE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obummercare will go down as the biggest mistake of any US president in history. Fuck the liberals who voted this fucker into office twice.

Yeah he's the worst President we've had since 2008 when that Bush Jr guy who invaded the wrong country finally left office (Jan/2009).

Re:And they hire the best H1B candidates they can

[Virtucon]

H1B's exist to drive down labor rates in the US, screwing over folks who are already here and they're not necessarily getting the best talent either. If you're telling me that Quality Shit Software couldn't find qualified candidates in the beltway for this project, then you're full of crap. That's not racist by the way and I object to the use of the term, but since QShit was looking for Business Analysts and Engineers, I know that there are plenty of those in DC who could have done the job. There's lots of these outfits out there, WiPro, InfoSys, Tata and others who use the H1B and pay less than other companies for the same work and sell themselves as saving money for the companies they work for. These are Indian outsourcing firms and they get called out even in their own nation. If we're going to have H1B Visas in this nation, then we damn well better insist that 1) Companies who are sponsoring H1Bs have done their due diligence in trying to find a qualified candidate already here. That means verification with screening results not just Taleo bullshit disqualification. 2) That the wages the H1B employee are paid are at least above the 80% percentile for the work, in the area where they're working and only for the duration of that work. 3) Once the work is finished, if the H1B candidate doesn't have a Green Card or is not on the path to citizenship, they need to go back and not job hop. Did you also know that the top ten sponsors of H1B visas or offshore outsourcing companies? That's another gap that has to be fixed, specifically companies that are in the body shop business need to be excluded from sponsoring H1Bs. I'm for letting people work in this country but the playing field needs to be a bit more balanced and indexed on unemployment figures as well, if that's racist to you then fuck off.