Officials of Lockheed Martin (News - Alert) Corporation, an information technology provider to the U.S. government, said recently that it had “thwarted a significant and tenacious attack" on its information systems that have greatly affected enterprise password management of confidential government passwords.

According to an account from industry observer Anshel Pfeffer, “No customer, program or employee personal data was compromised thanks to almost immediate protective action taken after the attack was detected May 21,” citing Jennifer Whitlow, a company spokeswoman.         

That’s a relief.                                        

Lockheed Martin is the world's largest aerospace company and the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier of sales. The company is still working to restore employee access, Pfeffer said, quoting Air Force Lieutenant Colonel April Cunningham as saying, “the incident's impact on the department is minimal and we don't expect any adverse effect.”

About a month ago, TMCnet’s Madhubanti Rudra wrote that Lockheed Martin won a $105 million contract from General Dynamics (News - Alert) C4 Systems, the prime contractor for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T).

The contract requires Lockheed Martin to produce additional communications equipment for WIN-T Increment 2 that is designed to deliver on-the-move broadband networking capability using satellite and radio links, focusing on mobile formations to allow nodes to operate on-the-move from Division and Brigade down to company levels.

The equipment that Lockheed Martin is going to provide include subsystem radios, modems, antennas and mast systems which will be integrated into a variety of combat vehicle platforms.

As you can clearly see, if Lockheed Martin had in fact been hacked of its top secret passwords, countries around the world that are enemies to U.S. would have been able to see exactly what type of equipment U.S. soldiers have, making them much easier targets on the battlefield.

Enterprise password management software however, allows users to “control access to all critical passwords in one central web-based repository,” which in turn provides a much higher level of security.