WASHINGTON–Data systems used by the Federal Housing Administration’s single-family insurance program have weaknesses that could be leveraged by crooks to create security breaches, according to the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But just what those vulnerabilities are has not been revealed, with the OIG saying it was choosing not to share the full results of its investigation with the public.
In the limited information it did release the HUD-OIG said only that its investigation “reviewed the general and application controls over the FHA’s Single Family Insurance System and Single Family Insurance Claims Subsystem as part of the internal control assessments required for the fiscal year 2015 financial statement audit under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act of 1990.”
The OIG further said the objective of this review was to “assess the general and application controls over SFIS and Claims for compliance with HUD information technology policies and Federal information system security and financial management requirements.”
Why not publish its report? “The OIG has determined that the contents of this audit report would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its distribution to those officials listed on the report distribution list,” it said in a statement.
In other words, it believes identifying the weaknesses would only increase the risk of a breach.