As in the commercial world, vulnerability is a watchword in virtually every federal program.
Vulnerability comes in different shapes and sizes and presents many levels of risk.
It increases as agencies move documents from paper to electronic formats, as they open more external network access points and as they integrate a growing variety of communication modes into their distributed systems. Systems that process private data, such as those at the Social Security Administration or IRS, are typically big, with multiple processors all backed up to safeguard against failure. We don't worry too much about them. But maybe we should. Transaction data doesn't go into and out of big systems the way it used to, via punch cards or magnetic tape.