Federal and contractor employees for the Hanford Site in Washington state should be particularly vigilant about cyber threats while they work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Energy Department said this week.
An Energy Department spokesperson said last week that 60% of Hanford’s 11,000-person workforce was telecommuting following the March 31 transition to essential mission critical operations.
This option enables employees to continue to support the DOE’s nuclear cleanup mission at the former plutonium complex, but at the same it increases the site’s vulnerability to electronic risks, Hanford Site management said in a Tuesday notice to workers.
Teleworking has become widespread across DOE’s nuclear cleanup complex during the pandemic. At least one other site, the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York, has urged similar precautions for teleworkers.
During the public health emergency, there are a rising number of scams, hoaxes, and “phishing” emails in which fraudsters and cyber intruders mimic reputable sources in order to obtain individual passwords and private information, DOE said in the notice.
The Energy Department warned remote workers to be particularly wary of purported COVID-19 websites or services that claim to provide help in securing federal government stimulus checks. The notice also provides a help desk number for Hanford workers to report suspicious-looking emails.
Hanford workers were also reminded to shield sensitive DOE information from family members, to physically shred unneeded documents, to take steps to protect home Internet routers, and not to insert personal media devices into government-owned laptops.
A DOE spokesperson said the notice did not result from any problem with cyber intrusions. “No. Yesterday’s employee message on cyber security was just a proactive message to reduce the potential for issues.”
