Inspection of Information Security at the St. Cloud VA Medical Center in Minnesota

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducts information security inspections to assess whether VA facilities are meeting federal security requirements. They are typically conducted at selected facilities that have not been assessed in the sample for the annual audit required by the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA) or at facilities that previously performed poorly. The OIG selected the St. Cloud VA Medical Center in Minnesota because it had not been previously visited as part of the annual FISMA audit. The OIG’s information security inspections focus on four security control areas that apply to local facilities and have been selected based on their levels of risk: configuration management, contingency planning, security management, and access controls. During this inspection, the OIG found deficiencies with configuration management, contingency planning, and access controls. Deficiencies in configuration management included critical-risk vulnerabilities that VA’s Office of Information and Technology did not identify, uninstalled patches, an inaccurate inventory, and unauthorized software, which deprive users of reliable information access and could risk unauthorized access to, or alteration or destruction of, critical systems. The team identified a contingency planning weakness concerning an untested emergency power shutoff in the data center. Weak access controls included missing logs and visitor access records, communication rooms with insufficient climate controls, and nonworking video surveillance in the data center. These deficiencies compromised the security and maintenance of the information system. The OIG made eight recommendations to the assistant secretary for information and technology and chief information officer to improve controls at the facility because they are related to enterprise-wide information security issues similar to those identified on previous FISMA audits and information security inspections. The OIG also made two recommendations to the St. Cloud VA Medical Center director.