An FBI-led interagency cyber task force sometimes failed to share relevant threat information with its own members, according to a Justice Department Office of Inspector General report released Wednesday.
Most information-sharing among members of the 18-member National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force happened at meetings in which the agencies made new disclosures about cyber threats against the United States. But some agencies were told to leave the meetings. The National Security Agency, Secret Service and Naval Criminal Investigative Service are among the intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the task force.
The report notes that the FBI did not immediately share pertinent information with NCIS about an investigation conducted by the Navy intelligence agency. NCIS received the information from the FBI about five months after an NCIS representative told the Office of Inspector General about the situation.
The FBI lacks the legal authority to force the sharing of information in the task force. But the agency has urged task force members to sign a memorandum of understanding on information sharing. A dozen members have signed the memorandum.
The bureau said it will create guidelines and processes for information sharing that are supported by task force members and work to get more agencies to sign the memorandum of understanding, according to the report.
“[B]ecause the NCIJTF is an interagency task force, we believe it is vital that all of the partner agencies have common understandings about information sharing,” the Office of Inspector General says in the report.
