How does the CIA keep its IT staff honest?

Be prepared to go through a lot of scrutiny if you want to work in the Central Intelligence Agency's IT department, says CIO Al Tarasiuk. And it doesn't stop after you get your top secret clearance. "Once you're in, there are frequent reinvestigations, but it's just part of process here," says Tarasiuk, who also gets polygraphed regularly, though he won't be more specific.

For those senior IT managers who are the "privileged users," meaning system administrators, "there is certainly more scrutiny on you," Tarasiuk says. "It's interesting: there's so much scrutiny that a normal person might not want to put up with that. But it's part of the mission."

There's so much top secret information contained within the CIA's systems that IT plays a key infosecurity role in making sure that CIA employees are not doing anything nefarious. There's also the persistent threat of foreign government intelligence agencies trying to break into the CIA's networks and databases. "We have a counterintelligence center that helps us with that," Tarasiuk says. "They are very concerned about foreign intelligence services that are interested in penetrating the CIA. Because of that we pay particular attention to the kinds of things we put on our network."