WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Friday she fired two dozen members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) IT department, citing "massive cyber failures."

"While conducting a routine cybersecurity review, the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) discovered significant security vulnerabilities that gave a threat actor access to FEMA's network," the DHS said in a statement.

"The investigation uncovered several severe lapses in security that allowed the threat actor to breach FEMA's network and threaten the entire Department and the nation as a whole."

No Americans were directly impacted and no sensitive data was extracted from any DHS networks, the statement added.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Bhargav Acharya in Toronto;)