OTTAWA — The RCMP was struggling to keep staff security clearances up to date during the time a senior employee allegedly tried to pass secrets to adversaries, an internal Mountie audit shows. Reliability status and secret clearances are valid for 10 years, while top-secret clearances must be updated every five years. “Updates are a critical insider-threat mitigation measure,” the audit report says. The auditors said the force’s departmental security program had “experienced challenges in meeting service level expectations” due to funding pressures and increasing demand. Eliminating security-clearance backlogs would reduce risk to the RCMP and help the force direct program resources to new security-clearance files, the audit report said.

Source: National Post September 27, 2019 08:02 UTC