WASHINGTON (AP) — Obama administration officials are facing mounting questions about whether they cut corners on security testing while rushing to meet a self-imposed deadline to launch the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchange enrollment system.
Documents show that the part of HealthCare.gov that consumers interact with directly received only a temporary six-month security certification because it had not been fully tested before Oct. 1, when the website went live. It's also the part of the system that stores personal information.
The administration insists the trouble-prone website is secure, but technicians had to scramble to make a software fix earlier this week after learning that a North Carolina man tried to log on and got a South Carolina man's personal information. A serious security breach would be an unwelcome game-changer for an administration striving to turn the corner on technical problems that have inconvenienced millions of consumers and embarrassed the White House.
Two computer security experts interviewed by The Associated Press said that clearly the better option would have been to complete testing.
"The best scenario is to have done end-to-end testing," said Lisa Gallagher, vice president of technology solutions for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, a medical technology nonprofit. That it wasn't done "would cause me some mild concern," she continued, adding she would advise a relative or close friend to wait until the website is stabilized before plunging in.
Asked former White House chief information officer Theresa Payton, "If you haven't done end-to-end testing, how can we say with certainty how hard or easy it is for cybercriminals to attack at different points in the process?"
"It makes me shudder a little," said Payton, a former bank security executive who now has her own company.
Payton served in the George W. Bush administration and has been consulted by congressional Republicans but says she has no partisan agenda on the health care law. "We need to help because we have to make this right," she said.
The website was supposed to provide easy access to a menu of government-subsidized coverage options under PPACA. Administration officials say they remain confident it is secure.
"When consumers fill out the online application, they can trust that the information they've provided is protected by stringent security standards and that the technology underlying the application process has been tested and is secure," Medicare administrator Marilyn Tavenner assured the Senate's Health Committee on Tuesday.
But a short while later, Tavenner acknowledged the Carolinas security breach. "We actually were made aware of that" Monday, she said in response to a question from Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. "We implemented a software fix."
It was not immediately clear how the North Carolina man was able to view the personal information of the man in South Carolina. However, a vulnerability that has afflicted websites for years is known as "horizontal privilege escalation," in which a legitimate user of a website slightly alters the string of random-looking characters in the website's address or inside downloaded data files known as "cookies," causing the system to display information about the accounts of other users. It can be protected against by a well-designed website.
Tavenner, a respected former hospital executive, has emerged as a key cybersecurity decision-maker for the health care law. Her agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is charged with carrying out the Affordable Care Act.
According to federal law and policy, all government computer systems must have a security certification before going live.
Tavenner approved the Sept. 27 security certification for the health website, which read: "Aspects of the system that were not tested due to the ongoing development exposed a level of uncertainty that can be deemed as a high risk."
