Johnson releases statement regarding DHS Einstein Program

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson released a statement of Friday regarding a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report and the department’s Einstein Program.

The GAO recently released a report that detailed that DHS “is partially, but not fully, meeting its stated system objectives,” regarding the department’s national cybersecurity protection system.

“The National Cybersecurity Protection System that DHS has deployed includes the EINSTEIN system,” Johnson said. “GAO recognizes in its report the significant benefits of EINSTEIN. The first two phases of the EINSTEIN program have been deployed across all federal civilian departments and agencies. This now allows us to detect cybersecurity threats, and EINSTEIN has in fact proven invaluable to identify significant incidents. The new and third phase of EINSTEIN, known as EINSTEIN 3A, has the ability to actively block – not just detect – potential cyber attacks. Unlike commercial products, EINSTEIN 3A can rely upon classified information, so the government is protected against our most sophisticated adversaries.”

Johnson added that, at present, Einstein 3A is currently protecting 50 percent of the government and is now available to 100 percent of the government. To date, the program has blocked more than 700,000 cyber threats.