Amid the ongoing partial shutdown of the United States government, a number of official government websites are not secure or accessible, according to reports.

As a byproduct of the shutdown, a reported 80 U.S. government websites, including those for the U.S. Department of Justice, NASA and the U.S. Court of Appeals, are operating without renewed security certificates to ensure that communication between websites and devices is encrypted and secure. Certifications are assigned an expiration date upon issuance that can be from a few months to several years away. Due to the shutdown, furloughed government IT personnel are not permitted to renew those certifications.

Such is the case for the now-vulnerable U.S. Department of Justice website, which is operating under a certificate that expired in the week preceding the shutdown. Many more certificates may expire before the shutdown ends.

Visitors accessing government websites may receive an error message or warnings that they are attempting to visit an insecure site. Even if visitors successfully reach a website, however, the information they are looking for might be out of date or requests made on those sites may fail to process.

According to Suzanne Spaulding, former under-secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, that department's recently added cyber-security and infrastructure security agency is operating with less than half of its usual staff, making the already-challenging job of cyber-security, according to Spaulding, even more difficult.

"With each passing day, the impact of the government shutdown on our nation's security grows. Meanwhile, our adversaries are not missing a beat and the daily attacks on our systems continue,” Spaulding added.

Meanwhile, other industries are experiencing similar challenges brought about by the shutdown, including interrupted data collection efforts and research projects in the field of science.