Years after breach, Los Alamos makes cyber progress

More than a decade after a security breach that made international headlines, Los Alamos National Laboratory has turned things around.

The SANS Institute has awarded Los Alamos the 2011 U.S. National Cybersecurity Innovation Award for cloud computing security.

Los Alamos was recognized for using vShield architecture to create the Infrastructure-on-Demand cloud platform. The SANS Institute called the move inventive and said Los Alamos has deployed a private cloud that allows the organization to offer infrastructure-as-a-service to its researchers. Los Alamos cut the 30-day server provisioning process down to 30 minutes.

It’s a far cry from 1999, when then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson confirmed there had been a serious breach of security at the Los Alamos Lab where the Chinese allegedly stole nuclear secrets.

This story is part of Federal News Radio’s daily Cybersecurity Update. For more cybersecurity news, click here.