House takes steps to boost cybersecurity

House leaders have asked the chamber's security officials to implement a new cybersecurity training regimen for aides and take additional measures to protect sensitive information from potential hackers. After a six-week review prompted by The Washington Post's disclosure of the ethics committee's secretive deliberations, Daniel P. Beard, the House's chief administrative officer, recommended technology security updates that focused mostly on making staff aware of the security risks on the Internet. "Changes in security policies will make it clear that all sensitive House information will remain on House equipment at all times, it will be encrypted when stored on mobile devices and must not be transmitted on any public access system," Beard wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-OH). Beard undertook the review after a junior staffer took home a sensitive computer file that included a document naming every member of Congress the panel was investigating and updating most of the nearly three dozen investigations. In many cases, the lawmaker's ethics troubles had not been revealed publicly.