W.H. Busted Ignoring DHS Security Protocol – Trump Team Scurries Like Criminals

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Despite the fact that Republicans currently occupy the White House — and even control both chambers of Congress — the current presidential administration has not adhered as stringently to email security standards as you might think they would.

Republicans have spent a significant length of time attacking former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her usage of a private email server while in office. Even still, Axios now reports that the vast majority of email domains under the Executive Office of the President (EOP) fail to comply with a security standard set by the Department of Homeland Security last fall for outgoing emails.

DHS mandated that within 90 days of the initial order, federal agencies had to start using the DMARC email authentication system. With the system fully in place, email servers have authentication processes in place that must be passed in order for an email to avoid the trash or spam folders.

The Global Cyber Alliance tested the 26 email domains under the EOP and found that only one had the DMARC system fully implemented, according to Axios. Eighteen of the domains have nothing in place, while seven have the authentication methods activated but do not have the alert set up for email providers to move messages out of the recipient’s inbox if they don’t pass verification.

Thus, in the case of most of the email domains used by presidential aides, there’s little keeping adept individuals seeking to stir things up from sending faked official emails and getting them opened and read by their intended recipients. It’s not clear whose emails are protected by the DMARC system and whose aren’t from the Axios report.

This issue isn’t the only one with cybersecurity in the Trump administration; for instance, White House officials including Jared Kushner have used private email accounts for official business matters. At the time of the initial revelations about the president’s son-in-law email habits, his lawyer Abbe Howell insisted that the matter was of little concern, saying that his client most often used the account when someone else messaged it first.

Even if Howell’s statement was correct, the president’s son-in-law has since lost his top secret security clearance, paralyzing his endeavors in the White House. He was tasked at one point with — among other jobs — solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and his loss of a top secret security clearance reinforced the idea that he’s not exactly poised to make any headway there.

Other Trump officials to use private email accounts include Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, neither of whom actually work for the president anymore.

As for the president, he has long shown that his commitment to cybersecurity is applied in situations that he picks and chooses, rather than across the board.

For instance, back during the 2016 presidential campaign, he famously encouraged Russia in its efforts to steal emails from the Democrats.

In the time since that incident, the scope of Russian interference efforts has become more clear. Despite this fact, the president has been hesitant to say the least when it comes to actually holding the Russians accountable. His administration finally got around to imposing sanctions on Russia over the meddling last month.

Featured Image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images