By Eric Katz
June 16, 2015
The Office of Personnel Management will notify many more individuals their personal information was compromised than the 4.2 million current and former federal employees the agency initially informed, officials said on Tuesday.
The timing of the second round of notifications, as well as the number of employees who will receive them, is still unknown by OPM. The agency’s director, Katherine Archuleta, confirmed to a congressional panel that OPM discovered, in the course of looking into the initial hack it uncovered in April, a second hack that targeted background investigation and security clearance data.
Archuleta said it will notify the those who went through background investigations their data was compromised “as soon as practicable,” with OPM’s Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour adding the agency first had to identify exactly whose information was hacked. The initial notifications began going out June 8 and will continue through June 19.
Representatives from the Homeland Security Department, Office of Management and Budget, Interior Department — where OPM’s hacked servers were housed — and OPM all said they were taking steps to upgrade systems and boost security protocols. The other agencies noted, however, the hack was OPM’s responsibility. Archuleta said, in turn, she inherited “decades old” legacy systems that she was doing her best to modernize them.
