A consortium of non-profits that operates Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has shown improvement in the second year of its contract but fell short in some critical areas, such as goals tied to upcoming plutonium work and a lapse in cybersecurity that left some systems vulnerable to a widespread breach, federal officials said an annual report.

The Triad National Security consortium composed of the Battelle Memorial Institute, the Texas A&M University System and the University of California, was given a “very good” rating by the National Nuclear Security Administration for its operation of the laboratory during 2020. The annual ranking report noted that Triad had cybersecurity issues such as “improper access controls”, but the ranking was an improvement over last year’s “good” rating.