You might recall that the Office Of Personnel Management was hacked recently and the info on 4 million people got nicked. But that figure was revised upward as it was proven it was not a one time event. Well, we now know the scope of the problem. It appears that the personal info on 22 million Americans is out in the wild:
That number is more than five times larger than what the Office of Personnel Management announced a month ago when first acknowledging a major breach had occurred. At the time, OPM only disclosed that the personnel records of 4.2 million current and former federal employees had been compromised.
Here’s what’s really bad. Not all of these people are government employees:
Investigators ultimately determined that 19.7 million applicants for security clearances had their Social Security numbers and other personal information stolen and 1.8 million relatives and other associates also had information taken, according to OPM. That includes 3.6 million of the current and former government employees for a total of 22.1 million.
“If an individual underwent a background investigation through OPM in 2000 or afterwards … it is highly likely that the individual is impacted by this cyber breach,” OPM’s statement said today.
If this isn’t a wake up call for organizations of all shapes and sizes to get their collective acts together when it comes to cyber security, I don’t know will wake them up. This is a massive data breach where those who were responsible for protecting this info need to be hauled in front of congress to answer some tough questions on this because having this much info out there to be used in any way that some evil doer sees fit is not acceptable.
UPDATE: I guess heads are rolling as Katherine Archuleta who heads the Office Of Personnel Management has just resigned:
Ms. Archuleta went to the White House on Friday morning to personally inform Mr. Obama of her decision, saying that she felt new leadership was needed at the federal personnel agency to enable it to “move beyond the current challenges,” the official said. The president accepted her resignation.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
This entry was posted on July 10, 2015 at 8:38 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
US Government Hack Now MUCH MUCH Worse Than Originally Thought [UPDATED]
You might recall that the Office Of Personnel Management was hacked recently and the info on 4 million people got nicked. But that figure was revised upward as it was proven it was not a one time event. Well, we now know the scope of the problem. It appears that the personal info on 22 million Americans is out in the wild:
That number is more than five times larger than what the Office of Personnel Management announced a month ago when first acknowledging a major breach had occurred. At the time, OPM only disclosed that the personnel records of 4.2 million current and former federal employees had been compromised.
Here’s what’s really bad. Not all of these people are government employees:
Investigators ultimately determined that 19.7 million applicants for security clearances had their Social Security numbers and other personal information stolen and 1.8 million relatives and other associates also had information taken, according to OPM. That includes 3.6 million of the current and former government employees for a total of 22.1 million.
“If an individual underwent a background investigation through OPM in 2000 or afterwards … it is highly likely that the individual is impacted by this cyber breach,” OPM’s statement said today.
If this isn’t a wake up call for organizations of all shapes and sizes to get their collective acts together when it comes to cyber security, I don’t know will wake them up. This is a massive data breach where those who were responsible for protecting this info need to be hauled in front of congress to answer some tough questions on this because having this much info out there to be used in any way that some evil doer sees fit is not acceptable.
UPDATE: I guess heads are rolling as Katherine Archuleta who heads the Office Of Personnel Management has just resigned:
Ms. Archuleta went to the White House on Friday morning to personally inform Mr. Obama of her decision, saying that she felt new leadership was needed at the federal personnel agency to enable it to “move beyond the current challenges,” the official said. The president accepted her resignation.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
This entry was posted on July 10, 2015 at 8:38 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.