Lockheed Martin: They got nothing... all our systems remain secure

by Steve Ragan - May 31 2011, 17:20

In a statement addressing reports of attacks on its systems, Lockheed Martin, the largest military contractor in the world, has stated that it did in fact detect attempts to breach the network, but noted that they were unsuccessful.

Located in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed employs more than 126,000 people the world over, and generated nearly $45.8 billion USD in sales last year. Most of this money came from the Pentagon, where Lockheed is the leading supplier of technology and hardware.

“On Saturday, May 21, Lockheed Martin detected a significant and tenacious attack on its information systems network,” a statement from the contractor starts.

“The company’s information security team detected the attack almost immediately, and took aggressive actions to protect all systems and data. As a result of the swift and deliberate actions taken to protect the network and increase IT security, our systems remain secure; no customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised.”

Over the weekend, after word of the attack started to spread, many speculated the Lockheed incident was the first successful attack on a company due to the RSA security breach earlier this year.

In interviews with the media, Sondra Barbour, Lockheed’s CIO, has stated that the company now uses RSA SecurID tokens that issue eight-digit codes instead of four-digit ones. This is in addition to other security enhancements the company now leverages.

“To counter the constant threats we face from adversaries around the world, we regularly take actions to increase the security of our systems and to protect our employee, customer and program data. Our policies, procedures and vigilance mitigate the cyber threats to our business, and we remain confident in the integrity of our robust, multi-layered information systems security,” Lockheed’s statement continued.

While nothing was compromised, Lockheed is still investigating the incident in order to determine the attack’s origin.

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